Google announced a new mobile phone today. We have seen a number of announcements for ground-breaking, sexy new mobile devices in recent history

• AT&T/Apple’s iPhone
• Palm/Sprint’s Palm Pre
• Verizon/Motorola’s Droid

Google’s new Nexus One is available exclusively from … wait, it isn’t available exclusively to any mobile phone company or locked to any network. As subtle as this can seem on the surface, it changes the game in a profound way. Customers have been oppressed by artificial limitations placed on their hardware- well, the hardware that they kinda own- for far too long, and this simply needs to stop. It is inherently evil for any company to cripple or severely limits hardware they sell for the sole purpose of competitive advantage and to hold their customers captive. Apple learned this lesson many years ago when it lost market share to the PC. The cell phone companies must adapt or die.

Personally, I have had dozens of phones on every mobile network under the sun, and don’t recall many, if any, particularly good experiences with any of the companies I did business with. At the end of the standard two year contract period, I regularly jumped ship even if I was reasonably happy with my current provider. There was no reason to stay, their only goal was to hook you and forget about you for two years.

We’re reaching a point where it doesn’t really matter who carries your bits from your mobile device to whatever destination you send them to. They’re just bits, 1’s and 0’s whether they represent and email, a photo, a text message, a tweet, or a voice call. So long as they get where they’re going reliably, the pipe they flow across is completely irrelevant. I still use SMS to communicate with my low-tech friends, but have to pay extra for a communication that would be free via email, Twitter, Facebook, et al. Give me a pipe to the Interwebs and get out of my way!

The concept of buying a phone and being able to use it on any network its hardware will allow for is necessary step to repair the reviled mobile phone industry in the US today. It is also time to stop arguing VHS vs. Beta and standardize on GSM like the rest of the world already has done. Concentrate on what customers really care about: a fast network, a reliable network, and their choice of any phone they choose to buy.

With this crucial shift today, the future is bright for the customer to take back what is rightfully theirs – choice.