Google to launch iPad killer?

There is a lot of hype about the iPad right now, but today news has reached us that Google is in the process of building its own iPad killer.

Google is clearly set on a new strategic initiative. They have clearly worked out that, in the future markets being able to aggregate content and sell ads against it is not enough. As Apple has shown, to really make money you need to own the end device as well. That way, you get the benefit of an end to end - and most importantly, closed - supply chain.

This is clearly very hard to do in the existing PC/Internet ecosystem, as to go up against WinTel, HP, Sony, Apple etc would be very expensive, even by Google standards. But to penetrate new end device markets as they emerge is a different story, as Google can then become an early player and influence the market. So for Google, the key is to identify new device driven end-to-end markets

Take Smartphones, for example. Planet Mobile was caught with one finger in its navel and the other up its *rse with the arrival of smartphones, allowing first RIM, then Apple to enter and take it away. Google has now started to execute it's strategy in Smartphones with the Android system. Its a classic "fast follower" strategy, but with limited success to date. Maybe they got in too late, maybe Mobile is one step too far for a company with PC/Internet DNA - time will tell.

But the iPad market is a different game, its far more of a PC derivative with tones of e-Readership. Google has already been bludgeoning the book industry to get all its content online, so what better than a Google device that optimises the reading experience and curation of the Ad serving against it, page by page?

In fact, owning the end user device gives Google an exciting extra amount of your data to mine:

- Your location - a Google device can constantly tell Goggle where you are, and even better, where all your friends are - all it has to do is parse the social graphs on the apps on your Google tablet
- What you are doing when you are not using Google on the device
- All your stored documents - no need to put them in the Googlecloud anymore
- We understand the device will allow integrated e-Commerce, so Google wil also be able to see something it hitherto has not, ie your credit card and other spending activity

It will automatically serve targeted Ads against all content, and of course by owning teh OS Google ensures that users cannot use ad blockers etc. We understand that it will run under an expanded implementation of Android, and be mainly wizard driven (for the largely dumber mass market audience). The new OS is code named gWIZ (though Googlewags call it AlterVista)

Google is staying very quiet about the device right now, but all the signs are there that this is a serious play, and like Google Wave it is being developed by a large team somewhere out-US that is warm and near the beach. Cape Town and Rio de Janiero have been mentioned. The design of the device is said to be similar to the iPad, but also (to quote) "far more awesomer".

We also understand that the device is to be manufactured in Taiwan - rumours that the Chinese fracas was driven by their state-run firms losing the contract are apparently totally untrue.We are also told it now has its own project name code, OCULO (it sees everything) but may be called the gPad in the market.

We wonder if it will hit the gSpot?