The saga of the Google Phone has been a real roller coaster ride over the past few months. Just when the device appeared to be little more than a completely baseless rumor, the New York Times stepped forward to confirm that Google was indeed shopping around a Google Phone prototype to wireless carriers and developers. This led to a renewed interest in the phone, with a few months of rumormongering following.

Now, however, the Times, the same publication that resurrected the Google Phone rumor, has stepped forward to debunk it. "In short, Google is not creating a gadget to rival the iPhone, but rather creating software that will be an alternative to Windows Mobile from Microsoft and other operating systems, which are built into phones sold by many manufacturers," the Times writes. "And unlike Microsoft, Google is not expected to charge phone makers a licensing fee for the software." For Google, a mobile operating system represents one way to break into the nascent world of online mobile advertising–to that end, the OS and perhaps, even the phones themselves, would be subsidized by advertising. What’s more, the OS is said to be totally open-source, in addition to being available to vendors sans a licensing fee. Okay, so the Google Phone is dead but the Google OS lives, meaning that we could see many different Google phones. Fair enough but when will we see it? "Google is expected to unveil the fruit of its mobile efforts later this year, and phones based on its technology could be available next year."

For more on the Google Phone mobile OS:
– see this New York Times article