Today was a big day in the world of wireless mobile devices.  Verizon Wireless is expecting to begin sales of the $200 (with contract) Motorolo DROID, the first smartphone running the Google Andriod 2.0 open source operating system, on Nov. 6.  This open source operating system for mobile devices is poised to become the new standard for mobile hardware and the first real competition to Apple’s iPhone.  And as if news of an Android 2.0 smartphone release date wasn’t enough to get the world stoked (and Apple scared), Google is demonstrating its new Google Maps Navigator application.

Via: The Official Google Blog

The Google Maps Navigator app, which is only available on Internet enabled Android 2.0 smartphones, bundles all the best features of traditional personal navigation GPS devices and Google Maps into one concise navigation solution.  And most importantly, unlike services offered by Navteq or others on stand alone GPS devices, the Google Maps Navigator app is free.  The ramifications of this are huge, as evidenced by today’s performance of personal navigation related stocks such as Garmin and TomTom.  Google is not only advancing the standard feature set that will be required to compete in the PND market, but its doing so, at least initially, for free.

Really, it was only a matter of time until the massive mapping infrastructure being compiled by Google would find its way onto portable devices that could actually help people search and navigate at the streetview level in real time, thus this should come as no surprise to other PND manufacturers.  Google’s street view doesn’t serve much purpose (other than as a novelty) for someone sitting behind a desk.  While I appreciate my Garmin GPS and often praise its value as a navigational aid, its limitations compared to the shear amount of information available on Google Maps were apparent from its unboxing.  Searches within the device’s catalog of over six million points of interest are exceptionally slow due to hardware limitations, whereas searches via the Google Map Navigator app will rely on Google’s own blazing fast search infrastructure and thus only be limited by the speed of the phone’s Internet connection.  Additionally, Garmin charges a fee for yearly updates to its maps, whereas Google doesn’t.

The enhanced features of Google Maps Navigator, in addition to all the standard features of existing personal navigation GPS devices, include voice searches using Google’s Voice recognition technology, real time traffic overlays, photographic satalite imagery, and actual street views where available (see video below).  A unique caching feature preserves routing information in case the phone’s Internet connection is compromised.  And as already mentioned, all of this is free.

It’s pretty amazing that Google, a gatherer and re-distributer of information, can so drastically influence markets in which it’s not directly involved.  As of today, the entire personal navigation industry must change.  Incumbants can’t continue to charge for information also offered by Google for free.  New ways to monetize the industry and novel business models will have to be developed.  The continued convergence of application specific devices into one device to do it all will continue.  And in the end as capitalism prevails, the ultimate beneficiary of all this turmoil and technological advancement is the consumer, who can expect better, cheaper, more feature-full products.