Here are some hopes (some of them high) with regard to Google I’m wishing for as we speed toward the New Year. These are in no special order of importance.
1) A Google phone in 2008, based on Android and including total Apps functionality and GPS instead of My Location. I will buy it.
2) 700 MHz spectrum schmectrum. I want a pledge for a wireless network in 2008. Google can go solo or partner with Apple or some carrier for this.
But not just any wireless network that crunches numbers based on your usage. Like Google Apps, I want to pay one set price and be done with it. How does $500 sound for one set price with unlimited minutes and data usage? Insane? Sue me.
3) Several mobile social networking services powered by the Google network and running on Google phones. I’d like Google to take the Zingku and Jaiku services and roll them out for mass consumer adoption.
4) Total portability for Google’s OpenSocial network. If I’m on MySpace, I want to be able to contact someone in Plaxo or LinkedIn without leaving MySpace. Let’s knock down the walled gardens so that we can reach anyone from anywhere on the Web.
5) a resolution, one way or another, to the Google-DoubleClick dilemma. Will the FTC and EU shelve the deal or bless it? Either way, it’s bogging down the market now and the regulators’ decisions could seriously influence the way vendors play in the market going forward.
6) I want a tour of a Google datacenter, one of those several thousand square-foot warehouses with thousands of Wintel boxes all humming in harmony.
7) An inside view into the search algorithms that influence PageRank, whose fluctuations have rankled so many bloggers and content publishers piggybacking on the company to make money. I’ve heard we owe this to a complex technology called Dataspaces though Google won’t give up the secret search sauce recipe.
8) More BIG customer wins for Google Apps Premier Edition. You can tell me that 1,500 or more businesses are signing up for Google Apps a day, but the key will be landing more large accounts like Capgemini. Then we can begin to have a conversation about whether or not the GAPE platform is a serious challenger for Microsoft Office and other such suites.
9) Along those lines, total offline access for Google Apps. I hear it’s coming via Google Sites, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
10) An effective, secure, non-invasive online ad model for social networks. Facebook couldn’t get Beacon right. Will Google, which has had all of its ad practices battle-tested, find a safe way to monetize apps via OpenSocial?