I’ve been hearing friends and family complain about dealing with their wireless providers for years, and I’m sure you have too (or maybe you were the complainer?).  This is not uncommon, since many of the policies of cellular providers are unethical and designed to trick you. This post will investigate their incentive structure, and how to turn it around for your benefit.

Some of the more common unethical practices by cellular providers:

Google released a new feature on Google Maps called My Maps, which allows users to make custom landmarks such as road trip stops, vacation spots, favorite restaurants and more.  Additionally, My Maps allows you to share these maps with friends.  The platform aspect of this allows developers to import data into My Maps, which could help you geographically see where your friends are, see gas prices on the map, and all sorts of other nifty things.  To see this in action, I found a Googleplex My Map, which will show you around the Google Headquarters.  This is a new type of social networking which has many possibilities.  I have come up with just a few myself, but I’d love to hear of anything more you’ve thought of as a potential application of this new feature.

Google, which has been on a tear purchasing smaller web companies over the last year, announced that it has acquired GrandCentral, a company that helps users manage their phone communications.  Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

I have been using GrandCentral now for quite a while, and am hoping they keep the service active and supported (they claim it will be).

Why was this a strategic move for Google?

Google has spent a lot of money improving their AdWords advertising platform, including purchasing Urchin, the most respected webstat service, and integrating it as “Google Analytics“.  Analytics allows Adwords customers to track their return-on-investment (ROI) of campaigns they run online by tracking clicks and visits, and ultimately sales.