Just as the celebration of Apple’s iPhone, was reaching its crescendo, the Internet was awash with predictions of a new awe-inspiring rival. The prophets of the interconnected world of blogs, YouTube and podcasts were all preparing from a mammoth punch from search guru, Google. The site and organisation which blitzkrieged through the search world, invaded social networking, reinvented advertising seems to be now preparing to ambush and transform the world of mobile phones, as we had once known it.

Amid the rumours, Google itself has remained tight lipped, unwilling to comment on the “industry rumours”. But the speculation was enough to set the blogging world ablaze, as many users started speculating on when the gPhone (as it has been dubbed) will be released, the probable functions on it, and what it would look like.

But there are clues are there for anyone looking for them. For a while now, the search giant has made it widely known that it wants to bid for frequency spectrum that is being vacated by television, as the medium moves from analog form to digital clarity. These frequencies could well be used to provide most Google functions on a mobile device. Even though ‘mobile device’ sounds enigmatic, the overwhelming usage figures show that in most cases, it can be safely translated to mean ‘mobile phone’.

For a while now Google has been patenting various kinds of technology, while this is not new, what’s new is that at least eight of these new patents are directly linked to technology used in mobile phones. And Google has filed these patents in a way that makes it difficult to find. The patents titles make them quite self explanatory, for example US Patent number 6785566, titled ‘Cellular Telephone Case’ or US Patent Application number US20050185060, titled ‘Image Base Inquiry System for Search Engines for Mobile Telephones with Integrated Cameras’.

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