It should be interesting to see what a product sold to consumers rather than wireless carriers will look like. My guess is that they will be less expensive and have less bullet-point features; carriers need expensive phones to justify an expensive ETF (and cost to switch), but consumers just want to buy something inexpensive and replace it in a year or so.
Note that "not messed with by your carrier, no bloatware, no extra skins you don't want and more timely updates direct from Google" is a fairly strong bullet point for some.
At the very least this will raise the bar so everyone else will have to do better.
I have a Samsung tablet where I really don't want some of their crud. (The device came with no less than 3 apps named "Music", and two named "Books".) I'd strongly prefer the vanilla Honeycomb skin and not Touchwiz, but I don't get that choice.
What they could have done is make it possible to turn off. And sell it in the Android market for other non-Samsung devices. (If it is that good then other people will want it.)
I've got a handful of Samsung devices and I'm sick and tired of touchwiz on all of them. It's not consistent between devices and versions, it duplicates features and software that's already built in, and it's bloated/slow.
The question then becomes, how big a chunk of the general public cares about a phone "now messed with by your carrier, no bloatware, no extra skins" etc.?
I think that most people who understand what that means would want it, but how many are really savvy enough understand?
> ... but how many are really savvy enough understand?
It doesn't matter! If they don't then Google's direct approach will be a commercial failure, and nobody is any worse off.
But remember that the people who write reviews, publish articles and are the recommender in their circle of friends and colleagues are more likely to care about this sort of thing.
But you can't omit the hidden cost in your cell phone bill every month that is present regardless of whether you buy your phone from the carrier (subsidized) or from Google (unsubsidized), which will automatically make the phones sold by Google much more expensive.
The only real solution to this problem is for Google to become an MVNO and start selling cheaper cellular service (cheap enough to get people to switch en masse and bring about some real change in the market).
Customers not on a contract and willing to avoid AT&T, Verizon and Sprint can avoid quite a bit of fees. E.g. T-mobile has a $30 plan for 100 minutes, 5GB of 3G (and EDGE after that), and unlimited SMSs. The 100 minutes is problematic, but I use Google Voice so I can just use my computer for phone calls at home. And at $0.10 per minute overages, it's still cheaper than any of the contract plans.
There are also other carriers in the US with cheap plans if you're willing to shop around.
This by itself would now be difficult for me. I have an unlimited (grandfathered) data plan from Verizon with 4G. I know several people who have it now, and they would never go back to 3G. Any MVNO that Google creates is going to have to support the latest technology.
There have been rumors of Apple creating their own cellular company - now would be the right time. Create a 4G-only cellular company that provides unlimited (HD) voice, texts, and data for one flat rate, Apple-style, with no contracts.
It's actually T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, which is somewhere between 3G and 4G. In theory, it should go up to 45Mbit down -- I've never gotten more than 10, but that's still plenty for my usage.
