Google Voice
January 24, 2005
It's all over the web today. Look, I was the one to pooh pooh GMail on April 1st, so I'll stay away from saying this is ridiculous speculation.
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Comments
I don't think this is 100% crazy (maybe only 80%). If Google can avoid telco fees at both ends, it would be feasible to use free voice as a way to drag casual users to Google more often and thus drive ad clicks. It would also cause ad rates to rise, as more callers go to Google (instead of the yellow pages) when they make a decision about what firm to call.
So I imagine any calls within the Google network will be free (like Skype). Calls to an advertiser's non-VOIP number will be free to the caller, paid by the advertiser. Calls to arbitrary non-VOIP numbers will be paid by the caller, but at a very low rate. Totally free calls across a VOIP-POTS gateway would be too pricey.
I don't think running a VOIP service is all that hard.
Whereas this is solid grounds for specualtion, that Google has a job posting for a data center negotiator is not. That's not to say that Google isn't or wouldn't do VOIP, jus tthat today's specualtion is not warranted based on the job posting and Google non-response.
It makes sense. Why? Do you want to search for your voice data? What about transcripts? People want this kind of information and I suppose they will get it. It’s about the data, stupid!
Jeff Pulver says:
"A quick check at the Spring 2005 VON delegate database shows that a number of Google executives in fact will be joining us in San Jose in March. Maybe Google is 'just interested' in VoIP. I suspect there may be something more to this. :-)"
http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/001624.html
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