This time at the expense of the eminently mockable gPhone from Google–or lack thereof!

Click on the image to make it bigger:

In the interest of time-saving, we will group them all here in one easy list that you can clip and save.

DEALS AFOOT?:

Yes, there is always a lot of sniffing around out there, especially given that a lot of Web 2.0 companies are more likely to be acquired than go public.

Do look for smaller ad networks to be bought up in the wake of a spate of bigger sales of late–DoubleClick to Google, aQuantive to Microsoft, Right Media and BlueLithium to Yahoo).

Now, it looks like AOL might get into the game again, after presciently grabbing Advertising.com way back in 2004 for $435 million. The new target, in a deal that a source close to the company said is “80% there,” is Quigo–the content-targeting ad network. The price? About $300 million.

Less likely for action are some other names being bandied about.

WordPress (the blogging software and hosting company AllThingsD.com uses), for example, has some suitors and is contemplating a sale after some offers. But don’t bet on it.

And RockYou is not being bought by, say, Yahoo–at least not this week. While rumors of wild valuations for the No. 2 maker of widgets on Facebook (Slide usually outranks it) have been bandied about, it has not had any significant talks with anyone.

GOOGLE GETS FRIENDLY (EXCEPT TO FACEBOOK):

As we wrote in a post yesterday, contrary to rumors, the Google project (codenamed Maka-Maka, doubtlessly by that wacky pair, Graham Spencer and Joe Kraus, pictured here, formerly of JotSpot and Excite, who worked on it) was imminent. As in now. Right now. This instant.

Officially named OpenSocial, it is a way to create a social graph over the Web that is open to third-party apps friendly and, as I wrote, is indeed both a “real attempted assault on the Facebook platform or more of a way to widely spread the gospel of social networking (and, thus, an assault on the Facebook platform).”

While Google has signed a bunch of prominent partners, it has yet to grab the No. 2 social-networking site Facebook (unlikely) and the No. 1 MySpace (much more likely, but don’t hold your breath). But it’s definitely a put-up-or-shut-up dare by the search giant, especially given Facebook’s professed love of openness.

Who knows if it will catch on, given that it is clear it is all in the hands of the apps developer community. If not, it will surely be a big black eye for Google, if it can’t motivate widely beyond search.

FACEBOOK IS A BIG BOY NOW:

It looks like former Yahoo Mike Murphy–who heads ad sales at Facebook (and is pictured here)–is finally getting his ducks in order with a new ad offering to be called SocialAds next week at its big confab in NYC.

Unlike the competition’s contextual ad programs, this will be squarely aimed at people’s self-expressed interests and demographics.

And, of course, Microsoft will be Facebook’s partner in serving the ads, for now at least. Good lord, it has bought and paid for this date many times over, so a fine time must be had by all!

I can’t tell you how thrilled we are that Facebook (and that nice boy Mark Zuckerberg) is finally putting some meat on its skinny little business model to take advantage of its fast-growing popularity.

But let’s keep in mind that it remains to be seen how lucrative this kind of ad network is and how scalable it is across the Web (and not just on Facebook).

It will also be interesting to see if the offering is truly innovative and different than existing solutions–or if it just serves up some dumb and useless ad for blood supplies, because you happen to be playing Vampire a little too much.

(We’re teasing, Mark, but not very much at all.)

OH, YES, THAT GPHONE:

More open verbiage from Google, which will roll out a mobile-phone operating system of software and services for a new kind of open cellphone sometime in this millennium (are you as sick of the speculation about the Gphone as I am?).

Since we’re talked out, here’s a much better Wall Street Journal Online video on the subject:

BOVINE UPDATE

Yahoo’s holy cows? Still sacred and going strong!

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

So let’s just all agree to suspend the will-they-or-won’t-they speculation over the much rumored GPhone from Google.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kevin Delaney and Amol Sharma wrote a nice wrap-up yesterday of the plans by the search giant to create a mobile handset.

And why not, especially since a lot of growth in advertising is expected to come from the mobile market in the future, as more robust phones arrive and are used for even more computing by the average user. Now mobile ads sales are in the paltry $1.5 billion range annually, but it’s predicted to be going to almost $15 billion only a few years from now.

The GPhones, however they are made and sold, would also presumably carry all the various Google applications (like search and mail) that have been popping up on other handsets, the most recent example being Google mapping services on Apple’s iPhone.

As Google CEO Eric Schmidt said as much in secret business code to Walt Mossberg in an interview he did in May at the D5 conference (the video of the entire interview is embedded below): “What’s interesting about the ads in the mobile phone is that they are twice as profitable or more than the non-mobile phone ads because they’re more personal.”

Translated: We’re jumping in with our big feet asap!

And Google’s recent activity in the upcoming wireless-spectrum license auction by the government should pretty much put to rest any other doubts, given it could eventually allow it to turn into a phone company.

And, oh yeah, they hired phone guru and Sidekick creator Andy Rubin a while back. And you don’t have to be a psychic to know he–wait for it–is working on a phone.

Because he is.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.