What Google Wants With Its Own Phone: Control

With all the attention Google's plan to launch its own phone is receiving, a sensible question remains: Why, when it makes billions off the high-margin business of search and online advertising, would it get its hands dirty launching a mobile handset? Google's fortunes come from advertising, making money off eyeballs and user experience. As the online world matures and growth from advertising revenue slows, Google is looking to reap ad dollars from mobile. EMarketer has online advertising revenue growing 6% next year, compared to 40% for mobile. Consider that the search juggernaut last week showed off its vision of mobile search -- from the promises of visual search to using voice commands to find stuff -- it makes sense that Google wants to have a direct hand in accelerating the promise of these applications and control the user's experience with them. "Mobile is the next frontier for everyone," said Bill Ho, analyst at Current Analysis. By directly controlling the handset experience and its specs, "they can control their own mobile destiny. At the end of the day, it's adding more subscribers, adding more eyeballs," Ho said.