Just how powerful is the Google brand, anyway?

What's in a name? Google--and the rest of us--is about to find out. With T-Mobile USA poised to officially unveil the HTC Dream--the first handset based on Google's Android operating system--on Sept. 23, The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the phone will heavily emphasize the Google name in its branding and marketing. It's a bold and fairly unprecedented move: While the vast majority of devices note only the manufacturer and mobile operator in question, the Dream (and, presumably, subsequent Android phones) is expected to arrive emblazoned with the four-color Google logo, suggesting the depth and scope of the handset's integration with the company's signature web services.

Conventional wisdom dictates that consumers buy hardware, not operating systems. But Google is a different and arguably singular proposition. Ten years into its existence, Google has entered the rarified air occupied by brands like Kleenex and Band-Aid--brands synonymous with their respective products or services. "Google" is now a verb as much as it is a corporate identity: When consumers search for something on the web, they "Google it." Which doesn't necessarily guarantee Google is in fact the search engine that they use, but as verbal shorthand, everyone who's ever surfed the web knows what "Googling it" is and what it means. That kind of immediacy is an invaluable commodity--slap the Google brand on a handset, and consumers know precisely what it is and what it's capable of doing before they remove it from the box.

Google services and applications from search to Gmail to maps are already present across multiple operator networks and operating systems, of course--but how many consumers understand that? The Google brand adorning the HTC Dream promises all of those services bundled together in one handset. It is in effect a phone that promotes itself explicitly as a mobile web device. Consider that according to Internet traffic analysis firm StatCounter, within 24 hours of releasing its new web browser Chrome earlier this month Google claimed 1 percent of the global browser market--you simply cannot overestimate the power of the Google brand. Like Apple, consumers consider it a trademark of quality. And while that alone doesn't guarantee the HTC Dream will experience the same acclaim or market penetration enjoyed by the iPhone, it does position Android as an OS whose future success hinges as much on the logo on the outside of the phone as it does the software on the inside. -Jason