Google Going Mobile: Details on Gphone Project

The Wall Street Journal's Amol Sharma and Kevin Delaney break more details ($) on Google's wireless plans.  Some key points:

• Google investing "hundreds of millions" of dollars developing software and courting handset operators to develop customized phones to work with Google search, mail, and other services. Hopes to have multiple carriers selling service on multiple devices.
• CEO Schmidt says "mobile ads are twice as profitable or more than the nonmobile ads because they're more personal."
• Google ultimately hopes to offer mobile service that is ad-supported
• Verizon and others resisting because Google wants big percentage of revenue share
• Google also committed to developing mobile browser that doesn't suck.
• eMarketer says mobile ad market was $1.5 billion last year, growing to $14B in 2011.
• Google has chatted with AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and others, U.S. and int'l.
• Prototypes "not as revolutionary as iPhone."
• Skeptics diss the efforts as equivalent to ESPN's failed "sports-centric phone."

SAI mobile analyst Dan Frommer will follow up.

Related: The analyst, the iPhone, and the future of the mobile web