Google Phone Confirmed

The Google Phone rumors have been confirmed, Noticias.com (‘news.com’ in Spanish) reports.

Hm… you don’t read Spanish? Okay, fine, here’s a human (my) translation:

The General Director of Google Spain confirms that the company is working on the development of a mobile phone

(originally by Estefanía Pérez)
Isabel Aguilera, General Director of Google in Spain and Portugal, has confirmed to Noticias.com that the company is working, “with others”, on the development of a mobile phone. “Our engineers have dedicated part of their time to investigating a mobile phone to access information,” Aguilera has specified to this portal.

The speculations about Google’s possible entry in the design and sale of mobile phones arose after the company recently published a job listing looking for engineers and analysts specializing in the telecommunications sector. In the same listing, Google specified that they are in a phase of experimentation with diverse wireless communications systems.

In a conference on integrating the Internet in business strategy, organized by the Association for Progress in Management (or Leadership), Mediterranean Zone, Isabel Aguilera has explained to Noticias.com that although 70% of the engineers’ time is dedicated “to developing our business nucleus, that is, search and advertising,” and some 20% to developing “products that have quite a bit to do with this nucleus”, it’s true that about 10% of their time centers on developing products “that at some point could be related to our business.”

Within that last field, Aguilera has indicated that a mobile phone to “access information” “has been investigated,” in addition to studying “the way to extend the information society to less developed economies.” The General Director of Google in Spain and Portual has noted that although “they might be products that can seem strange, all form part of our innovation process.”

At this time, the search engine has 36 products and “another 18 in the laboratory” and, since it’s in an experimentation phase, among those is the aforementioned mobile phone.

I hope that’s a bit easier to understand than the Google translation, which keeps translating Aguilera’s last name (that’s the ‘Eyrie.’). Ah, machine translation.

So, is this a scary encroachment or an awesome innovation?