Google Phone is a “Go” for Launch; Yahoo Go Isn’t

It seems that it’s not just search that we see such disparity between Yahoo and Google–there’s a huge chasm between them in the mobile space too!

Google, emboldened by the early success of Droid, is moving forward with plans to build its own phone. While its Android platform is powering new cell phones–such as the Droid–Google doesn’t design the actual hardware.

That’s going to change early next year.

TechCrunch doesn’t have any more details that what we reported a month back, but there’s plenty of speculation and rumor to share:

We have some fairly good information that suggests Google is working with a Korean phone manufacturer on the Google phone – LG or Samsung. Samsung has multiple parts in the iPhone and could be pressured by Apple not to work with Google, which says LG is the more likely partner for Google…We’ve also heard from a good source that Google is planning a big advertising push around the device early next year – like January.

Man, there are going to be a lot of deflated Droid owners come January, if this all comes true. Which makes me wonder if Android is so new, that users will hold back from buying a phone, until they see what new hardware is on the horizon–effectively creating a catch 22 situation.

Meanwhile, back at the Yahoo batcave, Yahoo Go is being shuttered:

Dear Yahoo! Go user,

Yahoo! Go will be discontinued on January 12, 2010, at 12:00 a.m. PST, so that we may focus on simplifying and enhancing your future mobile Web experiences. After this date, you will no longer be able to use Yahoo! Go 2.0 or 3.0 from your mobile phone.

We encourage you to visit the new mobile homepage from your mobile browser to access an even richer, more personalized Yahoo! experience.

We appreciate your support and thank you for using Yahoo! Mobile services.

For more information and customer support, please visit the help center from your PC.

The Yahoo! Mobile team

I wonder how much of a role the iPhone played in its failure. With thousands of iPhone apps available, mobile users simply don’t want a "one size fits all" approach to mobile applications. The recently launched Yahoo Mobile for Web will apparently live on.

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Twitter Conferences Are In

As part of the Internet marketing industry have you done the conference circuit? Have you been to SES, SMX (put cardinal direction here), Adtech, PubCon etc, etc? On a yearly basis how many of these trips can you justify or get away with? Well, with shrinking budgets everywhere now you have to add the new spate of Twitter conferences to your hit list of things you absolutely have to do to get out of the office learn more about the industry.

TechCrunch tells us of the growing list of conferences that are starting to sprout up as a result of the use of (or confusion around the use of) Twitter for business purposes.

It looks like the trend of Twitter conferences is growing, with more events popping up around the country. As we’ve said in the past and will continue to say, there are tremendous opportunities for businesses, brands, non-profits and individuals to use Twitter as a tool for customer support, fund raising, brand management, advertising, job search and much more.

I have not attended one but I can imagine they must be pretty quiet because everyone is likely to be talking to everyone but those right in front of them. I gotta tell ya that when someone tweets that they are talking to someone I wonder if they are even listening to them or concentrating on their 140 characters of brilliance they are allowing the rest of their audience to ingest.

Of course, if you attended the 140 Character Conference in New York in June the venue itself (which was literally underground) forced Twitterheads to actually listen to others since there was practically no connectivity for the attendees.

Twitter is so fascinating in that it appears that so many folks are finding ways to monetize the service without the service monetizing itself. At least with Google (which face it, is why most of these conferences exist in the first place) makes money and knows that these conferences will only help it make more.

So if you are tired of the usual shows and you need more opportunities to ‘network’ then think about these:

• TWTRCN 09 DC- for non profits and government types. October 22 in Washington, DC.
• 140 Twitter Conference / LA – Endorsed by Biz Stone. Need we say more? September in Los Angeles (for those who didn’t get the LA part of the title).
• 140 Characters Twitter Conference – Jeff Pulver’s deal goes west coast on October 27th in Los Angeles.
• Cool Twitter Conferences- Apparently this is a traveling road show that has stops scheduled in Boston and San Francisco.

So don’t miss your chance to blow off work get out and learn more about Twitter and the future of communications. Hotel bars in the areas of these meetings can’t wait to serve you!