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It was just three years ago when Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google took the stage with Steve Jobs to help unveil the revolutionary iPhone at the annual MacWorld Expo. The two technology giants worked together to enable Google services to the iPhone. Their relationship flourished during development and they appeared to have a bright future together even joking that they should merge and call the company AppleGoo. Schmidt was even invited to serve on Apple’s board.

Today, it is a much different story. These once very close companies are now bitter rivals battling for dominance over the mobile computing market. They have been fighting over the last six months over patents, applications, and lawsuits to try to gain an edge on this emerging market. Early this month, Apple sued HTC, a phone manufacturer that make mobile devices that run Google’s Android OS claiming they violate iPhone patents. Google is pushing for smartphones to have an open, nonproprietary platform where users can download anyone’s app to use on their device. Apple, on the other hand, wants the market to be tightly controlled and apps can only be downloaded through their own App store. Even further, Jobs claims that Google stole from them by releasing a similar product. Jobs was quoted saying “We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business” believing that Google wants to kill the iPhone. Although Google claims that some Android prototypes predate the iPhone they continue to battle over features and functions like the multi-touch control. Then the already fierce battle heated up when Verizon started running ads declaring Android’s superiority over Apple with the ability to run multiple applications at once and took shots at AT&T’s poor network performance.

In July, when Google tried to include Google Voice on the iPhone and was immediately denied by Apple, Schmidt stepped down from the board and the acquisition battle ensued.  Apple made a bid to acquire AdMob, a mobile advertising company, but was scooped up by Google. Apple responded by quickly acquiring Quattro Wireless, AdMob’s top rival. The same day Google introduced the Nexus One with many similar features to the iPhone. Google is also developing a set top box that will rival Apple TV. There is now speculation that Apple’s next move against Google could be to make Microsoft’s Bing the preferred search engine on the iPad and iPhone. Even bigger, the newest rumor is Apple developing their own mobile advertising platform taking the battle to a whole new level.

The new service, rumored to be called iAd, is said to debut April 7^th. This move isn’t surprising with their acquisition of Quattro and discouraging App store developers from creating apps using location-based information for mobile advertising, most likely because they plan to do it themselves. Jobs has also been describing iAd as their next revolutionary service. It seems that Apple plans to take over mobile advertising much like they have digital music. Now, with Google’s recent patent and their acquisition of AdMob both sides have a strong foothold and the battle for the mobile advertising has begun.

Regardless of the outcome, this fight for market dominance will undoubtedly spawn some revolutionary technology, continue the debate of open source vs. tightly controlled technology, and determine the future of mobile technology and possibly advertising.

Last week Google launched a new application for use on Android mobile devices that allows users to use their camera phone to capture an image of something like a landmark, logo, or work of art and run a Google search off the image to instantly pull up information. It is called Google Goggles and will change the way we find information about the world around us. This type of “augmented reality” application opens up many possibilities, if you are a tourist in a new city you can instantly pull up relevant information or if you are researching different species on a hike you can take a picture of a plant to quickly identify it, or even snap a photo of a product while shopping to find the best price. There are currently similar apps out there that offer similar functionality like PlinkArt that identifies paintings or SnapTell that pulls up book information but Google Goggle is the most advanced, it can even identify people.

This is where the problem lies with the Google Goggle application, it can instantly pull up information on anyone it captures making it a threat to personal privacy. With so many people having an online presence with social networking sites, picture sharing, and video sites they are left open for strangers to quickly learn everything about them without knowing. Because of these privacy concerns, Google has blocked the ability to identify people for now. Google does not have the best track record regarding personal privacy and has been criticized by watchdog groups for their street view technology on Google Maps.

Privacy concerns aside, this technology can open up great mobile marketing possibilities. This emerging technology will no doubt change the way people use their mobile devices and interact with the world around them but the privacy concerns should not be overlooked.