Inside the rumour mill...

The mobile industry likes nothing more than a good piece of gossip. One particularly juicy nugget of whisper that has refused to die is the Google phone, a piece of mobile kit the search giant is supposed to be working on.

Rumour hounds have been hard at it in recent weeks. Among the evidence used to back up the theory are patents the company has filed on predictive mobile location-based search tech; the blog of one venture capitalist, saying he has been told by sources of a BlackBerry-like gadget in the offing that may be Google-made or run a Google OS; and The Observer's recent report of a partnership struck between operator Orange and Google with a view to producing a branded device made by HTC.

Full story: silicon.com