Google offers phone support

Inevitable

Phone support for a phone might seem a fairly basic requirement but not to Google. Its culture had been completely tied in with peer support – so if you have a problem with a Google site you search for a solution on Google and usually someone pops up and helps.

These people aren't Google personnel – they are fellow "customers", if you can have customers for an unpaid-for service. There will also be Google people around for when something escalates.

It's been clear for a while, following record levels of forum activities since the phone's launch, that this wasn't going to work. Google, however, appeared to have resisted the moves.

Other avenues

There are three basic means of supporting a phone which gets a lot of user queries. The first and more straightforward is to leave it with the organisation that sold the phone in the first place.

The next is to refer to the company on whose network the phone is working. The Nexus One is usually sold with a contract so whoever the mobile phone company is might be able to help.

Unfortunately for Google this proved unworkable because the laws around who is responsible for the handset depend on who sold it. Ditto referring the queries back to manufacturer HTC, which will help where it can but it has no contract at all with the end buyer of the phone.

Credibility gap?

This has been a year of major launches, with this and the iPad in rapid succession. The Google phnone has not sold massively and is still drastically outpaced in the market by the iPhone.

Any perceived inability to support the hardware can only damage Google in the market at the moment. The company will be hoping that the new support line for the US will be seen as enough and in time.

Links (open new windows)

Nexus One
Apple
HTC