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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?"

5 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Possible Google Plan... by madstork2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if this is a step towards making VoIP basically a free tool, much like the web is today. It would be interesting if Google or another
    VoIP provider go to an advertising model to support free VoIP.

    I think it would be interesting to have ads while a call is being connected (i.e. ringing). It seems like they could pipe audio ads down the wire during the inevitable pause while the system tries to track down a cell phone, or the long distance call is being routed...

    A company like Google could also put a phone front end on to the search engine, I'm thinking along the lines of directory assistance, but instead of limiting info to just addresses / phones numbers, the Google directory assistance would search the internet and speak the results (and a few related ads) over the phone.

    They might even have the CPU power to do adequate speech recognotion. All told it is pretty easy to imagine a system taking adavtage of the newest phones, with enhanced SMS, web interfaces, along with a voice interface. It would also be cool if you could specify where you want your search result output to go. Maybe if they had VoIP and some type of phone based interafce you could have your results displayed on your phone, pda or spoken. With a viable VoIP perhaps you could have the results faxed to you at a hotel. I'd also like to see the option of having the results emailed.

    All told these relatively small technical advancements, would be large strides in making Google even more ubiqutious. Non-computer users and casual users would have another resource to get and retrieve information in the "real-world".

    I just wish I was smart enough to get a job with them . . .

    1. Re:Possible Google Plan... by tod_miller · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree, I know there is advertising in this...

      But I think google will not even have ads on thier VoIP, they are thinking bigger:

      Companies pay for a 'click to call' link on the web? Perhaps they have this idea...

      Just to make this a well rounded /. response, what is the state of free VoIP sex lines, and when will we have star wars type communications on earth? Holographics-over-ip anyone?

      --
      #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
    2. Re:Possible Google Plan... by grcumb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "But I think google will not even have ads on thier VoIP, they are thinking bigger:"

      Or, they're thinking simpler. What do you do when you're talking on your home phone? You idle the time away, gazing abstractedly around you.

      I worked for a VOIP company who shall remain nameless. In that time, our business unit beta-tested a VOIP handset that had a fairly functional web interface built into it. The early versions had monochrome display, but the newer ones had colour. They were fed by standard CGI scripts.

      It's fairly easy these days to do text to speech, and with a display on the handset, you could be served up text ads as you talk. They would be about as unobtrusive as their current set of web ads are, and people would be getting their phone calls - anywhere in the world - for free.

      If that's not a viable business model, I don't know what is.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  2. Re:Total message integration by goth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Better yet: Voice conversations gets indexed too and our previous telephone calls are suddenly searchable. This could be rather usefull, just as looking up old mails is today, but of course various matters (like privacy and storage) needs to be sorted out first.

  3. Re:Endgame by MMMDI · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There used to be one that used advertisements to support the service of free long distance... Freeway, I believe the name was (but don't quote me on that). I used it quite often as an alternative to buying numerous phone cards every week, and never had a problem with it.

    Basically, it worked out like this: Dial a 1-800 number, put in your personal pin number, listen to a fifteen-second ad. You just earned two minutes. Push # to hear another ad (for another two minutes), or * to make your call. There was no limit to the amount of ads you could listen to, so you could (and I did) just keep pushing the button to rack up an hours worth of time before making the call. There were no ads played during the call, no interruptions, nada.

    Of course, it really sucked when you built up a fair amount of time, only to dial a wrong number or find out that the person you're calling wasn't home.