The real customer, however, is only dealing with the carriers, and Google hasn't commoditise these. If anything we are getting even more market concentration.
Not yet, anyway. But the carriers have to be the next target. The huge capital requirements to build a network is their main barrier to entry, but that's unlikely to stop Google.
I wonder if they realize this (they probably do), and if so, what they are going to about it.
Google don't want to be in the phone market - they want to be in the selling ads on search market.
Their worry was a closed iPhone with an Apple only browser might go to an Apple/ATT only search page with Apple/ATT ads - or they might simply replace all the Google ads with their own before sending pages to the phone
And once people accepted this on iPhone they might also accept it on all the other phones then on all the home cable connections - like BT/Phorn.
I don't think Google is ever going to be willing to enter the carrier business. Although they hinted 1 or 2 years ago to a system where the global carrier would lose most of there power. It was phones that would operate on unlicensed frequencies or locally licensed frequencies. The phone could register with what is locally available by having a GPS and a database of operators by locations. It was a neat idea and I could see Google pushing this as a standard to be implemented by different operators. Sadly, I can't find a reference to the post I saw back then. Google certainly doesn't seem to be pushing this solution currently.
Not yet, anyway. But the carriers have to be the next target. The huge capital requirements to build a network is their main barrier to entry, but that's unlikely to stop Google.
I wonder if they realize this (they probably do), and if so, what they are going to about it.