Free Googlephones?
Question. If someone gave away free cell phones in return for your time viewing ads every time you made a call, would you want one? Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt thinks people will, and believes that as the computing power of mobile handsets increases, people will spend more time on them. Therefore, it’ll be easier to monetize eyeballs from sheer volume of time spent in person-hours. (And of course, they’ve increased that likelihood by offering mobile versions of several of their applications including Google Mail, Maps, and Search.)
Hey, who doesn’t like free swag? I’m a whore for gadgets, especially when they’re free. But as to whether I’d want to watch an ad prior to every call, I don’t know. They’d probably get really annoying. I wonder if I could conduct my Six Degrees experiment just on free Google phones. No doubt these phones would at least run Google Talk.
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December 8th, 2006 at 10:34 am
hi
December 13th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
[...] Pat Phelan asks where will it all end, in regards to all this free VOIP and VoIM going around. How long can a free model sustain itself? Will ad-paid models like that of Globe7 be accepted? Will Google’s rumored free phones in return for ad-watching take over the world? I had a second chat last Friday with James Wanless, President and COO – one of three entrepreneurial spirits behind Talkster, a new mobile-to-VoIM service that just relaunched on Monday. He made a very astute comment to me regarding free services, and wrote The great race (to zero). I’m paraphrasing him (so any misquote is my fault), but he said that so many [startups] think that giving away everything for free and grabbing a subscriber list is sufficient enough for someone with deep pockets to buy them up. He then pointed out that while Skype gave away a lot, they still had a monetization plan that they implemented, including CallOut minutes. [...]