Google sure does love shaking up the system.

Remember the original Google search page? It made news because your search results popped up fast and weren’t cluttered with ads. Remember when Google went public? It made news because the founders auctioned off shares to the public. Remember when Gmail came out? It made news because it offered 1,000 times the free storage space of competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo.

And now Google wants to shake up the way we buy cellphones  by letting you shop for the phone and the service independently, on a new Google Web site (Google.com/phone).

To introduce this phone store, on Tuesday, Google took the wraps off what may be the worst-kept secret on the Internet: a brand-new cellphone, designed by Google and made by HTC, called the Nexus One. It’s pretty sweet, it advances the state of the art, and it’s a welcome addition to the catalog of great app phones like the iPhone, Palm Pre and Motorola Droid.

You’ll pay $529 without a two-year contract for service with T-Mobile, or $179 with one.

But the truth is, the Google news this week isn’t quite as earthshaking as Google seems to think it is.