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Google Plans Free VoIP In the UK

Posted by timothy on from the thinking-ahead dept.

jarich writes "According to this news article, Google may be preparing to offer free Voice Over IP telephone service in the UK. This sounds related to a previous Slashdot article about Google starting to buy dark fiber. So what are they planning? A free service like Skype (computer to computer only) or more along the lines of Lingo or Vonage?"

10 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Endgame by locokamil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once again, I find myself wondering what Google's endgame is. Are they going to remain at the forefront of search technology, or are they going to attempt to orchestrate an M$ style invasion of our lives?

    1. Re:Endgame by seanadams.com · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Once again, I find myself wondering what Google's endgame is.

      Great businesses don't have "endgames". Microsoft has no "endgame" - their goal is to have all the money. It's not something you can ever finish, but that doesn't mean you can't make it your goal.

      Google's goal seems to be having ALL the information. There's a hell of a lot of info on the phone lines so it makes sense to go there once you've got a handle on the web.

    2. Re:Endgame by locokamil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It seems to me that Google's business model revolves around (gross oversimplification follows) simply throwing out targetted advertisements when they hear a keyword.

      I can't see how a phone based system can rely on that business model. As many of the more comical posts on this article have pointed out, a third party interrupting a phone conversation with an ad about some product or the other is... well... annoying. No one is going to use such a service.

      What it all boils down to is that Google is trying to diversify into areas where it has little or no chance of making money in. While it does so, it is going to ignore what its good at... and lose its search muscle to MSN or Yahoo. And while this speaks highly of the market economy, it doesn't really promote the idea that Google is run by highly intelligent people.

    3. Re:Endgame by HuguesT · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Replace endgame with "vision" or business plan.

      MS has a vision (windows everywhere) and a business plan (own the O/S everywhere from cell phones to supercomputers, crush everybody that disagrees, leverage O/S dominance to applications).

      You don't see MS diversifying into airlines, insurance, manufacturing, automobiles and whatnot.

      The question is: what is Google up to? Are they on a collision course with Microsoft in the short term ?

      In the last few months they have been putting out products for the windows platform only: hard disk search tools, image indexing tools, etc.

      To me this means that Google is getting less interested in the search business. Are they going to turn into some run-of-the-mill software house for the windows platform only or are they up to something else?

  2. What Skype is missing though... Skype IN by buro9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Skype to Skype... fine, cool, fantastic.

    Skype to Phone... fine, cool, fantastic.

    Phone to Skype... missing link.

    Without that last bit there is no incentive for someone to make a move to VOIP on a permanent basis for all of their calls.

    Why? Because you still have to keep a landline or mobile to be able to receive calls from regular phones... and because the cost of making a call to a mobile is prohibitive, it's likely that you keep a bundled (with TV package) landline.

    If the weight Google helps to make this a feature that is developed, then we may start to see a willingness to switch in large numbers a reality.

    As it stands at the moment... my (red neck equiv') mother was impressed, but she just sees it as one more way to do things, and she's very lazy and is still more likely to pick up and dial a regular phone. Show her she doesn't need the landline (by receiving calls, thus 100% functionality) and then there'll be something impressive.

    What has all this to do with Google? Well Skype In as I'll call it... it requires a network, something has to receive calls and store messages for you whilst your computer is off... who's to say context related sound adverts wouldn't be appended to the answer phone service... how would that differ from Gmail advertising?

    Things to think about :)

  3. Re:Possible Google Plan... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't understand why everybody thinks Google is going to offer telephone service. They haven't said anything that would give that impression, and AFAIK nobody has any information linking Google with VOIP at all! Everybody is just extrapolating because they are making a high-capacity global network. Isn't it possible that Google might want a high-capacity global network for a different reason? They are a network company after all! Let's not jump to conclusions here.

  4. Total message integration by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Voicemail shows up in your gmail inbox, e-mail gets summarized in voice messages, voicemail is indexed...

    And it all has ads.

  5. *scratches head* by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This article seems to be taking a huge speculative leap. Google is investing in heavy bandwidth - therefore, it must be for VoIP? Either there's evidence the reporter isn't revealing, or someone has telephony on the brain.

  6. No substance corroborating the statement by sipmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Can someone please point out where in the article the claim that Google will offer VoIP service is substantiated? As far as I can tell, it's based on speculations by "Julian Hewitt, senior partner at Ovum, a telecoms consultancy".

    Some comments on the article below:

    "The technology that will enable Google to move in on the market has been around for some time. Software by the London-based company, Skype, has been downloaded nearly 54 million times around the world but no large telecommunication firms have properly exploited it."
    The technology has indeed been around for a long time, and Skype, a proprietary walled garden system, is definitely not the first or only one to use it. So why is Skype implicated here?
    "The basic cost of making calls across the internet is almost nil. The real cost is in developing the software; after that, the service exploits available internet capacity."
    So why would Google buy dark fiber if the call "exploits available internet capacity"?
    "In addition, the sound quality of calls across the internet can be poor and the connections can be less reliable."
    As can been witnessed by using Skype, or other applications which incorporate modern codecs, for example the freely available wideband iLBC codec (http://www.ilbcfreeware.org), the voice quality over a broadband connection is usually excellent, in the case of iLBC much better then PSTN. The biggest issue is latency, which is increased in the case of Skype, where calls are often routed over media proxies to traverse NAT's.

    Overall a poor article, "By Elizabeth Judge, Telecoms Correspondent". But what can be expected of the Times?

  7. not really by Ghost_3k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Has anyone actually read that article?

    Although Google is reluctant to talk about its plans, the logical use of such a network would be to help to support a new telephone service.

    So, if any big company has open jobs for "strategic negotiator" to help the company to provide a "global backbone network", does that mean it's going to start a voip service?

    Is it really only me who thinks that this articole is speculating, no facts, no evidence...nothing...

    ghost_3k