Marguerite Reardon writes about why Google will not take on AT&T, even if it bids and wins in the upcoming FCC auction.

As a logical argument, Reardon’s works if you assume the premises are true. But at least one implied premise is false. Verizon and AT&T are rivals, playing the same game with the same customer base (with variations). They have similar networks, similar business models, and it is all based on control. Stating that Google will not “take on” these companies is both true and misleading.

It’s true in that Google probably will not attempt to become another Telcom company in the contemporary meaning of the term. It’s false, however, because that business model, like other business models of previous decades which are based on proprietary control, is crumbling.

Google will likely be looking to move the whole playing field right out from under the big Telcom game, and start (or at least join in) a new league.

I can’t predict how it is that Google will accomplish that. You can’t either. Rest assured that anything you can think of, the geniuses of Google have already thought of. Rest assured that the stuff you can’t think of is the stuff that the geniuses of Google can.

Market-type people can never predict the new thing; they just over-hype it once it is unveiled to them. The iPod is a modern example. If you would have asked a market analyst before the dawn of the iPod to give you odds on Apple vs Sony in the game of music players, you’d have gotten the same type of response as you get now with the Google vs Bigco Inc. question.

It was the innovation of the iPod that won over the market, that literally changed the landscape of music players and, yes, moved the game to another field.

Go out and ask anybody if they would switch to a cheaper, open mobile plan that allows them to establish a mobile identity while at the same time providing innovative high speed services, powered by a Google framework and a consortium of millions of developers, all constantly looking to add to that experience. The answer by people who understand the question is yes. Everyone else will play follow the leader like they always do.