We Used to Call Them "Portal Tenancies"

David Card | November 05, 2007, 08:38 PM

The Journal says this is one of the reasons for Google's "Android" mobile phone initiative:

Google has struggled at times in recent years to get its products -- including Google Maps, Gmail email and its search engine -- onto mobile phones in a way that's easy for people to use. With Android, software makers can theoretically write applications that run on any user's phone -- and consumers can freely browse the Web.

Gmail and Maps work flawlessly on my iPhone. In many ways, better than they work on the Web. Why do we need an "open" platform for this? Maybe because Google doesn't want to pay what we used to call "portal tenancies" in the bad old Interweb days, and what Google calls "traffic acquisition costs" in the current paid search market(s). Wonder what the deal looks like between Google (and Yahoo, too) and Apple. Bet I know which way money's flowing.