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Google CEO: "Your mobile phone should be free"
Schmidt advertises his views...

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Published: Tuesday 14 November 2006

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt sees a future where mobile phones are free to consumers who accept watching targeted forms of advertising.

Schmidt said as mobile phones become more like handheld computers, and consumers spend as much as eight to 10 hours per day talking, texting and using the web on these devices, advertising becomes a viable form of subsidy.

Schmidt told Reuters: "Your mobile phone should be free. It just makes sense that subsidies should increase [as mobile ads proliferate]."

He was speaking following a speech on the theme of business at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

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Schmidt also said his company was working on how to allow users to maintain basic control of their personal data.

Currently, Google stores consumer data on hundreds of thousands of its own computers in order to provide additional services to individual users. The company is looking to allow consumers to export their web search history or email archives and move them to other sites, if they so choose.

Speaking at another conference earlier this week, he said this undertaking is both a recognition of users' right to control their personal information, an effort to head off regulatory action and a response to an increasing trend on the internet toward openness rather than exclusivity.

Schmidt said: "Data should never be held hostage. We might as well get ahead of it before a law gets passed forcing us to do that."

Google is experimenting with delivering text, brand-image and video ads onto small-screen mobile phones. It is enjoying early success in its strategy to win phone network allies in Japan, where TV viewing and shopping on phones is advanced, he added.

The Google executive said his own company has no plans to directly give away phones itself, nor is he aware of any effort by partners such as phone makers Motorola or Nokia or mobile operators such as Vodafone to make such a radical move, he said.

The company, which will derive virtually all of its expected $10bn in revenue this year from selling text ads to computer users who use Google to search the web, has said previously it expected mobile phone advertising to match computer-based ad revenue over time.