Google’s expansion of its Internet-as-a-platform strategy continues.
Google announced plans on Tuesday to acquire Global IP Solutions Holding, a
company that does real-time VoIP and video processing.
The GIPS purchase is likely the final piece of the puzzle that Google
needs to build a robust Internet-based phone and video calling system
that can not only compete with Skype and Yahoo Messenger, but also give
people a single phone number and voicemail box that unites their home
phone, cell phone, and computer.
The four pillars Google already has in place to implement this
strategy are:
- Google Talk
(instant messaging client) - Google Voice
(unified phone number and voicemail) - Gizmo5
(computer telephony software) - Android
(mobile voice and data platform) - Gmail (text and
video chat)
What does it mean for Google’s competitors?
As ZDNet’s Larry
Dignan pointed out, “The deal means that Google will own the voice
and video conferencing engine behind its competitors’ instant messaging
systems.”
He added:
“One interesting thing to note about GIPS is its customer
list. On its site, GIPS touts Yahoo, IBM Lotus, AOL, WebEx and Baidu as
customers. All of those companies compete with Google products. For
instance, Yahoo uses GIPS VideoEngine PC product to deliver real-time
voice over Yahoo Messenger. Is that really going to last when Google
owns GIPS? It’s the same story for AOL Instant Messenger. Simply put,
Google will own the technology powering video and voice on the biggest
IM clients. On the Google Apps front, WebEx uses GIPS VoiceEngine and so
does Lotus Sametime. On the China front, Baidu also uses GIPS
technology.
Google’s plan
The future of the telephone call is as a voice packet. It’s simply a
far more efficient and flexible use of resources (albeit, call quality
occasionally suffers). This is true for home phones, office phones, and
mobile phones (when 4G arrives).
Google wants to thread the needle between the three, integrate text
messaging and instant messaging into the system, and give users more
control over the experience. Google also wants to turn phone calls into
text documents that can be quickly accessed and searched after the call
is finished.
With all that mind, Google is not really going to be your
phone company. The search giant doesn’t want to do the hard work of
laying cable, hiring an army of technicians, or messing with regulatory
agencies. Google wants to swoop in and provide an application layer on
top of the various phone and voice services and tie them together over
the Internet.
Sanity Check
There are going to be an increasing number of people, especially
entrepreneurs and road warriors, who will simply have a smartphone plus a
software phone on their laptop (similar to Skype). These are perfect
candidates to benefit from Google’s vision of the future of phone
services.
Enterprises will be more interested in Cisco’s
Unified Messaging approach, which ties together corporate PBX and
VoIP with smartphones, softphones, and messaging systems. Of course,
both Cisco and Google want to integrate video calling into the mix as
well.
mainstream then it will essentially separate the user access layer of
telecom communications (handled by Google, Cisco, Skype, etc.) from the
telecom pipes (handled by the phone and cable companies). We can already
see that happening, but voice services are the last piece that hasn’t
yet been revolutionized by the Internet
