Android news is coming out at an amazing pace these last few weeks with new phones and apps announced almost daily. Google, as usual has changed the game, not only by starting the Open Handset Alliance and spitting out Android but also coupled it's huge computing expertise with wonderful software to bring us free voice activated maps and now visual search. (Goggles).

Today there is a lot of buzz about the new, so-called "Google phone" apparently being in-house tested by them and rumored to be released in January. The phone itself is very interesting but what is more intriguing is another rumor that this phone will be unlocked and use the usual carriers only for data because the phone will operate on voip.

I suspect Google was frustrated at the way in which the carriers are holding down adoption of Android and by extension widespread use of the phone as an Internet device because of thee old school methods they use to monetize the written, verbal and visual goings on of us sweaty consumers.. Many carriers are still looking at these things as "smart-phones" when really the phone is a secondary part of the phenomena. It's a computer stupid and a two-way communication device that makes most desktop use obsolete other than for the size of the screen.

As such, it uses the computers software update model, not that of a phone. It is meant to be updated regularly over the air. We shouldn't even need to plug it in to our desktops. Let Microsoft wither on the vine and by extrapolation the carriers also if they continue to get in the way of unhindered access to the Internet and all that implies. Ther's gold in them thar hills Billy, it just ain't where you thought it was. I have a feeling that what's coming is that Google will sidestep those carriers out of frustration with the slowness of their metamorphosing into true data carriers as opposed to telephone companies who have gone wireless.