Seeing through the trees to the forest, New York Times reporter Miguel Helft, who published a feature on Google's mobile strategy this morning, says on his accompanying blog that "sources I talked to with knowledge of the project say Google is not building a phone." This is the conclusion I've reached previously here and here.

A former colleague at The Industry Standard (which is being revived, in case you haven't heard), Helft is one of the sharper reporters on the Silicon Valley beat, and he isn't blinded by the hype machine -- which, by the way, has been constructed and fueled by bloggers, not by Google itself.

"In short, Google is not creating a gadget to rival the iPhone, but rather creating software that will be an alternative to Windows Mobile … and other operating systems, which are built into phones sold by many manufacturers," writes Helft.

The primary difference, of course, is that the Google OS will be free and based on open standards if not open source.

The thing you have to love about this move is that it sets up a clash of tech titans that will make Microsoft-IBM or Oracle-SAP look like YMCA-league soccer. Microsoft-Google will enjoy a Shakespearean set of characters (with Sergey Brin as Hamlet, Eric Schmidt as Polonius, and Steve Ballmer as an over-caffeinated Claudius), all the money in the world, and no doubt some shady legal maneuvering (already previewed in the lawsuit over Google's hiring of Chinese research scientist Kai Fu Lee, considered a key figure in cracking open the huge People's Republic market).

The winner (and let's face it, there's room in the mobile world for more than one winner) will have its software applications and services on the majority of mobile-phone screens around the world. Right now that's about the biggest prize in information technology.