Google's latest acquisition puts it deeper into SMS territory, as the search giant announced that it acquired Helsinki-based Jaiku, a company that lets users keep track of their friends' activities via short SMS and Web messages, MediaPost reports.

"Yahoo briefly rolled out a service called Mixd that had some of the same capabilities, but they decided to discontinue it. And Twitter captured a lot of attention when it first came out, but everyone also looked at the service and thought about what value it presented beyond entertainment," said search analyst Greg Sterling in the article. "I think anytime there's an acquisition, competitors will study it and consider whether they should be buying equivalent companies."

There's still no word on whether or not the rumored "gPhone" will even be a phone. It might just be an operating system platform for other handset vendors to wrap a piece of hardware around. But if anyone is positioned to rock the wireless industry post-iPhone, it's Google.

GPhone Buzz Hits Frenzy After Google's Jaiku Deal [MediaPost]