Paul Thurrott, I was going to respond to your comments on my story on your blog via a comment, but you don’t have comments enabled, so instead I’ll just go ahead and do that here.

First you state:

“How, exactly, are Google and Apple “tech buddies”? The only “partnership” we’ve seen to date is a single uninteresting Google Maps application on the iPhone that doesn’t even all of the features of the Web version

First of all, the fact that you think Google Maps on the iPhone is a dud makes me wonder about your judgement right off the bat. Secondly, the fact that you say that this is the only “partnership” that the two have entered makes me certain that you are missing the facts.

Aside from the fact that – as I pointed out in the original article – Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board of directors (!), you may have noticed Apple including a little Google property called YouTube on both their AppleTV and iPhone products in recent months. This is no simple inclusion either, with all the videos are being reformatted into the h.264 format so as to best play on Apple devices.

Likewise you may have noticed that in iMovie ‘08 you can now upload directly to Google’s YouTube with the click of a single button. You may have also noticed that iWeb now has Google AdSense and Google Maps integration. I think you’ll be seeing quite a bit more of this integration in OS X Leopard as well.

You also don’t have to believe me, you can take the words right from Eric Schmidt himself earlier this year: Google and Apple are in the process of working on “many more” new projects together, that they plan to do more and more together because they “have similar goals, similar competitors.”

*cough* Microsoft *cough*

Second, you call out my statement:

“It does seem to be fairly well assumed that Google is going to release a cellphone at some point in the future – and that it might even be free thanks to advertisements that would run on it. Also fairly likely is a phone from Microsoft, which may or may not be a ZunePhone.”

Your response was:

“So, lots of good speculation there. (He even doubles up on the speculation in the first sentence, which might just be a record.) Let’s forget about the Microsoft stuff, since they’ve been doing Windows Mobile since it was first called Windows CE back in 1996. I’m all for a gPhone or whatever they’d call it, as I’m a huge consumer of Google services. I have zero interest in advertising-based clients, however, and would gladly pay a monthly fee so as to not deal with that. But again, I have to wonder. Where do these rumors come from? And where does the rumor end and the truth begin? The rest of this post drives right off the deep end (apparently Nokia, Motorola and others are just going to lie down and die) so it gets pretty silly.”

I could simply respond with this: so much for speculation huh?

But instead I’ll ask you to get out from behind your Microsoft shell and take in – if just for a brief moment – all the information the Internet has to offer. Don’t just read the hundreds, if not thousands of blogs emanating from Redmond that will undoubtedly glance over any news not pertaining to M$. Take it ALL in.

It has hardly been speculation for months now that Google is going to release a phone at some point. I mean is it still speculative when they are showing it off to vendors as they were 4 weeks ago? You’re a serious tech writer and you missed this? Were you too busy covering the release of Microsoft’s latest security patch?

Oh and lets brush aside talk of the ZunePhone (or whatever it WILL be called) to instead talk about Windows CE and Windows Mobile? I mean not only are you boring me, you’re worrying me that you think those two pieces of poor to mediocre software are in anyway as noteworthy as an actual phone – as in the piece of hardware that you and I both know Microsoft is hard at work on right now.

Okay, you’re interested in Google’s Phone which, for the record, you still at this point think is pure speculation, but you would not use it if it included advertising. So, would you also not visit your own site as it features not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE Amazon advertisements and THREE Google ads to boot!?

It must be hard to update your site when out of principle you refuse to visit it. Maybe you pay yourself a monthly fee to remove the ads for your experience? You’d gladly pay.

As for the rest, me driving “right off the deep end” and such, come talk to me in 5-10 years and we’ll see where the mobile carriers in this country are. If I’m wrong and they still have a stranglehold on the industry, I’ll more than happily admit that you were right on this point. But if I’m right, I have a feeling you’ll just dismiss my statements from 5-10 years prior as pure “speculation” and declare me “pretty silly”.

I’d rather be silly than clueless.

Paul, seriously, turn on your comments or stop running a blog that takes pot shots at other writers without giving them a chance to respond. You don’t run a blog, what you run is called a soap box.

[UPDATE 8/28]: I’d also like to note that today Engadget said something nearly identical to what I did a few days ago:

“Still, we can’t help wondering what El Jobso thinks about all this. Apple has been so buddy-buddy with Google lately, especially on the iPhone — and now Apple’s mobile team is on the verge of outright competition with one of its closest partners. We know that’s how the industry works, but it’s got to sting a little, you know?”

They used “buddy-buddy”, I used “tech buddy”. I fully expect Thurrott to call out Ryan Block now for this “ridiculous” assertion that Apple and Google seem to want to do business together.