The goons on the Street are finally starting to figure out what Ballmer has been saying for a while — Google is milking its search franchise and can’t make a go of anything else. One trick pony? Maybe. Then again, what a friggin pony. We should all have one trick like that. See here.

FWIW, IMHO, this is another case of Wall Street having short-term-itis and not being able to see what Google is really ultimately trying to do — become the world’s first global computer utility. That battle is ten years out but Google is putting itself in position to dominate the next version of computing. Call it the “cloud,” or whatever you want. But all Wall Street can see is that Writely isn’t making money.

Meanwhile there’s yet more speculation about a Google phone. Inside info here: I happen to know that the Google phone rumors are true. At least, in the sense that, yes, there is a phone. Now as for getting carriers to accept it? Well, see, Google has this teeny-tiny image problem for kind of, um, well, not playing so nice with other companies and not respecting other people’s intellectual property and kind of, um, being a little Microsoftian about trying to screw people with whom it makes “partnerships.” Just something to think about.