announcement was differentespecially for me.

You see, I sort of had skin in the game. It started when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington wrote that the Google Phone was real and it was coming. Google's not in the hardware game and Arrington's story cited unnamed sources. I read it as not making good market sense for Google and as Arrington trying to will something into being. and more in what many described as a rant. Arrington and I have some history; he tends to make me ranty.

I was partially wrong. There is a Google phone, or at least something everyone except Google wants to call a Google Phone. It's the HTC-designed and built Nexus One. This is another Android phone, featuring Google's most up-to-date software (Android 2.1). It'll work on T-Mobile's 3G network and eventually Verizon's 3G network. Funny how that doesn't sound all that exciting or significant.

What's changed, though, is that Google has opened its own online phone store to sell this and other Android phones. It'll even sell them unlockedfor a priceor with carrier support via the store.

So, it's a game changer like Arrington and many others predicted, right?

No.

If Google was only selling the Nexus One and then a bunch of other "Google branded" phoneswith nary a manufacturer partner name in sightwe might have something. If Google was planning on making some cash on the sale of these new phones, that could be a game changer.

The reality is, however, that Google has changed very little. In fact, when I think about this launch, it doesn't seem wildly different from the T-Mobile G1 launch. The big difference, of course, is that the manufacturer and Google are taking center stagenot T-Mobile. Back then, Google worked closely with HTC and T-Mobile to make the first Android phone a good product. It was almost a year before more Android phones followed, and I wonder if something in that relationship, or even the roll-out, made Google want to try something different. Google giving HTC Android 2.1 earlier than other manufacturer partners so it could build a better Android phone, by the way, is still Google simply trying to get the best Android phone out to the marketplace.

Even so, Google's decision to open a store where it does not appear interested in making a direct profit is puzzling. During the press conference, Google indicated that the process of buying a phone was too difficult. It wanted to simplify things. I think Google's just created a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.

I know that people like me and Michael Arrington can sometimes live inside the cocoons of our gadget-obsessed lives and not quite realize how average consumers perceive these roll-outs. So I asked a consumer who now owns a Droid if, given the choice, he would buy, say, a Motorola Droid phone unlocked from Google for almost $600, or if he would rather get it from Verizon for $199. The consumer started answering Verizon before I even finished the question.

I firmly believe that Joe and Josephine Consumer are simply not interested in the rigmarole of buying an unlocked product and having to choose a carrier separately. I know that many of my readers are more savvy and they like the idea of jail-breaking iPhones and possibly running their favorite phone on another supported service provider (if the radio fits, you just might switch), but that simply isn't the norm.

But back to the central question: Was I wrong?

In Arrington's article, he insisted that the product we would see would not be an HTC phone but a "pure-branded Google phone." Nope. This phone has Android branding, but it's clearly an HTC device. HTC execs were at the event and even spoke! Obviously, HTC is a major manufacturer, but it's based in Taiwan not South Korea. Not that it really matters. If, for instance, Samsung had built the Nexus One, executives would have been up on stage with Google, just like HTC's leadership.

Google did surprise me by officially getting into the retail business. I never expected it and got that wrong. Google will sell this phone directly to consumers.

Google hasn't done much advertising before, but I think Arrington's assertion that it'll have a big Nexus One advertising push is perfectly sensible, though Google did not exactly promise as much at the event.

Overall, though, I think Arrington misread Google's intentions. He thought it was about to start competing directly with other Android phone manufacturers. HTC and Google made it crystal clear who built and designed this phoneand it wasn't Google. The Google store is not intended to compete with any Android manufacturer or even service provider. Instead, it's there to help all of them. For Google, the name of the game is scalebig massive scaleso it can do what it does best: sell advertising space on a large distribution network. In this case, the network is Android phones.