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Google Latest VOIP Acquisition Target In Competitors' Backyard

  • MocoNews, Tuesday, May 18, 2010 2:17 PM
What's Google up to now, and who or what could be affected? Well, the search giant has offered to pay $68.2 million for VoIP technology provider Global IP Solutions.

Along with Google itself, Global IP's existing customers include "Yahoo, which licenses the technology to power voice chat on Yahoo Messenger, as well as Nortel, Samsung and AOL," Moco News reports.



What exactly does Google have in store for the publicly-held company? It's not saying explicitly, but according to Moco News: "Last month, Global IP Solutions said it was introducing new technology that makes it simple for Android developers to integrate video conferencing and chat into their apps."

Likewise, "The deal will enable the search giant to boost call and video quality on various services, and may see it offer video chat through Android mobile phones and other devices," notes NewTeeVee.



CNet's DeepTech blog called the move "an apparent effort to improve the services [Google] can offer online."

Furthermore, "The deal means that Google will own the voice and video conferencing engine behind its competitors' instant messaging systems," writes ZDNet's Between The Lines blog.

Oh, and if the fact isn't already clear, The Financial Times points out: "The deal would also mean that Google would own the technology that underpins part of the instant messaging systems of rivals including Yahoo, AOL and Baidu."

If and when the deal goes through, this would mark just the latest VoIP-related acquisition for Google. In November, it bought VOIP provider Gizmo5 for a reported $30 million in order to improve Google Voice.

"One area of strong acquisitions is in video and VoIP fields," writes Fortune. Prior to Gizmo5, "Google picked up On2 last year and has been building an open source video codec called VP8 around On2's technology ... The company also purchased Grand Central to become its Google Voice routing service."

Read the whole story at MocoNews »

1 comment about "Google Latest VOIP Acquisition Target In Competitors' Backyard ".
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  1. Maxim Yashunin, June 7, 2010 at 6:10 a.m.

    All the industry is talking about Google aim to control all major VoIP technologies. Its intention to buy GIPS seems quite reasonable then. The other aspect is what it means for the current GIPS customers. Let’s not forget that some of them are direct competitors of Google. It’s not unlikely they will have to be satisfied with limited maintenance or no support at all. Google will for sure use VoIP as a platform in its Android OS, Google Chrome and very likely in its Google Apps. Google will require all GIPS’ expertise and engineering resource to support its VoIP strategies.
    On the other hand there is SPIRIT DSP which has been successfully competing with GIPS over all these years and now stays the only independent VoIP technology company on the market. SPIRIT is famous for its dislodging GIPS from Skype and was listed among the Top 10 VoIP leaders (http://www.fiercevoip.com/special-reports/top-10-voip-leaders) by FierceVoIP. Today SPIRIT offers its VVoIP platform on a variety of desktop and mobile platforms, supporting not only Google’s Android but iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile (http://www.spiritdsp.com/press/videoconferencing-on-mobile-platforms.php). SPIRIT is proud to offer a video server (http://spiritdsp.com/press/Video-server-1000-channels-release.php) with 1000-channel capacity. Now SPIRIT is the #1 choice for service providers, application developers, and telcos that are deploying voice and video communication services.

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