Google Inc. today announced the launch of an all new navigation application, designed for all mobile phone platforms. The latest freebie application from Google is being perceived as potentially disastrous for the commercial GPS navigation service providers and near fatal for navigation services provided by almost all wireless carriers in the United States. However, this assumption is based on the possibility, that the new mobile phone app by Google is extremely successful and sees itself in majority of handsets.

This isn’t the first time that, Google is being seen as a thorn for its competitors in a certain field. The search giant has a long history of distributing free stuff to users, that are usually charged by other companies. These include services like the POP3 access in Gmail, voice mail function in Google Voice and Google’s widely used Web analytics tools.

However, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt believes that, his company is only doing what the consumers expect it to do and that is, serve them better, with even better services and applications and that too free of cost. He pointed towards the exponential increase in smart phones and the pace at which internet access is being provided to the public, as some of the main reasons for Google’s freebie stride.

The all new service is expected to be via the new updated version of Google Maps for Mobile alongside the launch of the new mobile operating system, Google Android 2.0. Google Maps for Mobile with the new step by step navigation feature is expected to be released for major mobile platforms and Apple iPhone. However, Google has left the choice to the device manufactures, whether they wish to embed this application in their devices or not.

Via New York Times.