Google is expected to sell the Nexus One Googlephone direct from its site in “early January”. If a semi-secret countdown displayed in huge letters on the Google.com homepage is any kind of hint, then “early January” could mean January 1st 2010.

To see the mystery countdown, go to Google.com and, without entering a query, hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button (see, it is still good for something). Up will pop a countdown, currently at around 1,335,200. It appears to be ticking away the seconds, and it will hit zero in just under 15.5 days, which is January 1st, 2010.

Of course, it could just be a countdown to the New Year, but as Google has a habit of advertising some of its biggest products (the G1 handset, for example) on the front page of Google.com, it could also be the Nexus One. It would also continue Google’s annoying habit of making big product announcements on weekends and holidays, the times that tech bloggers traditionally are too drunk to write.

Mystery page [Google]

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