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Google Plans Free VoIP In the UK
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?"
Why would they do that?
"Do no evil" does not also mean "Do stupid".
You can also call a regular phone with Skype. It's not free, but you can do it.
There's a 32 word limit per call.
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?
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 . . .
Someone left a bracket on there, so..., 00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1454225
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
it would be good if they can do a free 2 phone in canada
...but I'd love to know how they're going to add unobtrusive advertising to a phone conversation.
For when the article gets slashdotted -
Google gears up for a free-phone challenge to BT
By Elizabeth Judge, Telecoms Correspondent
GOOGLE revolutionised the internet. Now it is hoping to do the same with our phones.
The company behind the US-based internet search engine looks set to launch a free telephone service that links users via a broadband internet connection using a headset and home computer.
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.
BT, which connects seven out of ten British households, has developed its own internet-telephone service. However, the telephone giant, which has the most to lose if the new technology takes off, has been reluctant to promote it heavily.
Julian Hewitt, senior partner at Ovum, a telecoms consultancy, said: "From a telecoms perspective there is a big appeal in the fact that Google is a search operation -- and of course the Google brand is a huge draw."
Mr Hewitt said that a Google telephone service could be made to link with the Google search engine, which already conducts half of all internet inquiries made around the world. A surfer looking for a clothes retailer could simply find the web site and click on the screen to speak to the shop.
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. However, charging does become necessary to link internet calls with the traditional phone network.
In addition, the sound quality of calls across the internet can be poor and the connections can be less reliable.
A recent job advert by Google's on its website calls for a "strategic negotiator" to help the company to provide a "global backbone network" -- a high-capacity international infrastructure.
By investing in capacity, Google could circumvent the problems of quality and reliability and guarantee better service.
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. The company would buy capacity cheaply, by taking up slack capacity left behind when the internet bubble collapsed in 2001.
Around the world, thousands of miles of fibre-optic cable remain unused because the amount of speculative development vastly exceeded demand. Such capacity would be available at rock-bottom prices today.
Elsewhere in the world, using the internet to make phone calls has caught on more quickly. In Japan 10 per cent of households already use the so-called "voice over internet protocol" and an internet service offered by Softband has 4.4 million subscribers. Its growth has depressed revenues of the local telecom group, NTT.
In the US, a company called Vonage offers customers unlimited calls each month for as little as $24 (less than £13).
Big companies and multinationals that make huge numbers of long-distance calls are also increasingly switching to internet calls to try to slash their bills.
Google, which was founded in 1996, built its business from scratch by offering a fast, reliable and free internet search. It gradually transformed into a highly profitable company by offering commercial services, including sponsored web links.
Its most up-to-date figures show that, in the first nine months of 2004, Google made a profit of $195 million on revenues of $2.1 billion.
START OF THE BIG SEARCH
# Stanford University graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page began working on Google's search-engine technology in 1996 when they were in their early twenties
# They tried to find a buyer for their work but were forced to set up their own company in 1998 because nobody was interested
# Two years later Google became the bigg
... except in Nebraska!
CORAL link for this article.
I greatly doubt that Google is going to offer VoIP. Google is a search company. VoIP so greatly differs from any of their other products, mission statements and plans that its quite obvious that either they aren't going to be offering VoIP, or that the new product will have VoIP as the sideline to something else. And before you say 'Google does communication tools as well, see G-Mail, Groups and so forth', let me remind you that G-Mail's whole concept is the instant searchability of emails, allowing you to store as many as you want without having to spend time organising them. Groups allows you to search intelligently across a decade of Usenet posts. The sending/posting communication aspects are merely natural sidelines. What about Orkut? Lets you search for people, and the links between them. Blogger? Creates easily searchable content. The thing that strikes me about VoIP is that it is entirely unsearchable with present technology. It would require an impossibly accurate voice recognition engine that could dynamically sync with a soundbyte. And it doesn't appear particularly useful either. So, my bet? Either this article is following red herrings, or its not getting the whole story.
Is it just me or is Google getting a little unfocused with too many acquisitions and weird plans like this? How about spending some time on your core business, your google groups "upgrade" was three step backwards.
Focus.
The more you know, the less you understand.
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
TINFOILHAT>
/TINFOILHAT>
VOIP is digital, and quite searchable with a text-to-speech converter. What if google wants to make your conversations searchable?
What if you make defamatory comments about GW? (or whoever is the power-that-be of the day)
What if they made it searchable, but didn't tell anybody?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Google seems to be getting good at getting into semi-developed industries and dominating the entire field. I can't wait to see what they pull-off. I can only hope that they will eventually bring it to North America.
Im imagining a Skype-like program that can also recieve calls from landlines (with cheaper rates). Also, the ability to record a conversation and then search a database of them would be interesting (but it would eat space and horsepower).
Hey! I can dream!
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
All Web based services from Google have Searching functions. I wonder how will Google apply its' search engine to this new VOIP service.
I know they have that "don't be bad" thing going on, but all it takes is one management change to turn Google into the most hated company around (SCO). I like their email and search, but doesn't this go too far?
Google could be the next DuPont or Monsanto. All products, from detergent to cat litter could be Google branded. "Let Google search out your stains with our StainRank system!" or "Our litter uses our search technology to find and destroy litter box odors!" What if in 20 years this really does happen? Let's hope the "don't be bad" doctrine will still resonate with Google's next CEO.
Probably more like it'll be great *after* the first few seconds, during which you hear a few ads. But Google is likely going to keep track of some data. Remember the Google business model: their resources are data and ideas. Ideas they have in spades... they've got some brilliant people working for them, and are recruiting the best of the best of the best (with honors, sir) to come up with the NextBigThing. Data they've also got in spades, but more data = more money. So far they've been very benign... but who knows what the future holds. I do think, though, that if Google turns evil, I may lose all faith in humanity forever.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
And it all has ads.
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.
Perhaps Google wants to be the phone and phonebook of the web? This seems to be a big a hurdle for technology today (how easy it is for your grandma to start using VoIP?), but in the future this may be the way to go.
Google should buy Skype... why reinvent the wheel?
From the article
# Google was forced to go public during 2004, so that some of its founding investors could make a profit. The company raised $26 million; its initial market value at float was one thousand times greater
Is this really the case ?
# The company's motto is "Don't Be Evil"
Isn't it "Do no evil"
BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
Slashdotters will be Slashdotters and will come up with far-fetched theories about how this meshes with Google's existing products and how it makes financial sense.
But the fact is this is all wild *Speculation*. In fact, it does not make sense for google to get into VOIP and there are several more plausible reasons for google to look into buying fiber.
Think about that for a second, take a deep breath, move on.
It might be the best of the free. But vonage sounds a tonne better (on my connection) than skype.
It seems to me like it might be more likely that google is working on something more mundane. I mean, the most reasonable guess to me would seem that google is just buying up lines while it has the cash in the hopes of being able to make money off them later, or they are just planning on putting in some new boxes over there or something.
If they were working on a new project though, it would seem more likely to me that it would be some aspect of a new search technology or something, maybe for big businesses (seems to me like google could make a killing selling custom database or indexing software for businesses, I would imagine that a lot of business problems would mirror the problem of indexing and searching information on the web, if a group of smart and talented people were to put the software together).
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
...they'll send you ads based on what you say? :)
I thought Google would move with Gmail into instant messaging but this step into VOIP which could also incorporate IM seems to be a logical step... It is probable they wish to harness the idea of one identity to which you can be contacted. Voice, Video , IM and email.
...I obey the laws of physics....
Some comments on the article below:
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? So why would Google buy dark fiber if the call "exploits available internet capacity"? 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?
The URL mentioned in the scoop is wrong and has an extra ]. Sheesh what a way to get moderator points...
Well, they already have to maintain some huge data centers and they've built up some expertise doing that. They're already in the information maintenance and delivery business, even if it's very low bandwidth compared to other content.
They're digitizing every book that they can get their hands on.
They're buying up dark fiber.
They'll be offering free VOIP.
To me, this suggests that they're building towards a mixture of data delivery services and a multihomed caching company like Akamai.
Infrastructure and content eventually lead inevitably to multimedia, to movies on demand. They won't care where you get your last mile of broadband IP connectivity from, but they'll take care of the rest.
It's just a theory...
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Well I'm similarly confused. I guess what they do is up to them, but I can't see how VoIP fits in with their current business at all.
From what I understand (I vaguely remember my commerce degree), it's generally good business practice to have a general but definite statement of what your business is designed to focus on. Not something that specifies the concrete aspects of day-to-day business (such as "providing a web search engine"), but certainly something general enough that it envelopes yourself and potential competitors and substitutes. Until now, I'd assumed that Google's guiding statement was something like "To help people to find information that is useful for them."
The point is that through knowing this, it makes it much easier to have a long term strategy and make decisions about how to build up the business so it'll be stable. For instance, any hiring decision that Google made could be weighed against how the new employees would contribute towards the business's goal of helping people to find information. This way, whenever Google moves into a new region such as...
I can't personally see how simply doing VoIP would fit into their existing business at all. It's not traditionally something that invites searching through any large archives of existing information, and I wonder what kind of existing in-house skills Google thinks it can transfer from its core business. Maybe they're thinking something to do with data storage, but that seems risky to me because the reason they have anyone who knows about data storage isn't because it's their core business -- it's because it's a spun-off necessity of part of their existing activities.
It might be that Google has simply realised that they could already have many of the technical and equipment resources to do it and so they want to try and make some money from it. But if they don't have the right minded people in-house already, there could be all sorts of problems and conflict with their existing business. It'd mean they may have to suddenly hire lots of new people to largely run an entirely new part of their business, or they'll have to buy and merge with an existing business that already has the expertise. Either could create problems.
Anyway, it's hard to say what's going on when looking in from the outside. It just seems a bit unusual if they're showing an interest in VoIP, and I'd wonder if there's lots of sudden external influence since it went public, that could potentially lead to its downfall. If I was an investor I'd be starting to get concerned, but I'm not an expert in these things.
In the UK the Yahoo messenger has BT communicator software embedded, which can make free net to net Voip calls, but also has access to a net to POTS gateway and vice versa, any costs are billed back to your home phone number automaticaly. But the basic net to net service is free.
see http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/
I could see google putting a 5 second add before dialing. That is about as long as I would wait b4 I got pissed. Hear me out - I think they will offer the phone service for free and they will make money by making advertisers pay to place their 5second add before the phone connects to the other person. That way the person dialing is forced to listen to the add (though the person could just as easily ignore it as well). However, This is much better than getting interrupted at dinner time by a telemarketer. At the point that you have chosen to make a call you are a captive audience. This is great win win situation for everyone. VOIP calls will be free and advertisters will foot the bill (w/ possible revenue to gain from the marketing though voice ads). It would be interesting to see how google sets up the UI for the VOIP - would there be text/image ads that appear while you are making your call or would it purely be a prerecorded message? What is the longest amount of time that a person would listen to an ad before hanging up, maybe they could only do voice ads once every 10 calls so it would be staggered.
:) as long as they keep innovating!
:) hire me!
Interesting points:
1. Google could listen (randomly) to the conversations and note down the frequency of words being uttered. This would correlate well with any of their search methodologies because because talking about a topic will surely lead to people searching about that same topic.
2. The people making VOIP phone calls have time, some money (they had to somehow get on the internet to make the call right?), and possibly some education. For higher margin products these are the people that you want to spend your advertising dollars on.
3. Cross-sell, upsell Google can offer people with gmail additional VOIP accounts. Again these are people that like google and are willing to use its services.
4. Google gains more public karma by doing things that benefit mankind while making some money on the side - to build more things to better mankind.
5. Owning yet another medium is lucrative and would be a great chance for them to learn another business without spending a ridiculous amount of money like the telecoms in the 1990's.
6. This could be a play to compete with microsoft in terms of becoming a global ISP that sifts through __everyone__'s information and preferences. Can you imagine how powerful this would make them? The would be able to potentially control almost all the "new" (internet, voip, videophone) advertising by amassing an enormous amount of data!
7. Videophones will become a reality in the next 10 to 15 years. Google could put an advertisement (picture in picture) while giving away the voice call for free. Again - advertisers would foot the bill while the service remained free. I think that is key - by keeping the basic service free they get far more people than if they charged money for it.
8. With TV usage declining and internet usage going on, google will win in the long run
Anuj Goyal
anuj_dot_goyal_at_gmail_com
come on google
Yahoo has it (VoIP via Yahoo messenger).
Yahoo is a search company.
Why shouldn't Google have it?
Very true... but on vonage.co.uk it would cost me 4p per minute to call Sweden where my girlfriend lives.
On Skype the same call costs less than 1p per minute.
Less than quarter of the cost.
Vonage might be for those who just want to make calls, but for those of us who make several hours of international phone calls a day Vonage is still extravagantly expensive.
Besides... I don't use a headset... my little computer is silent and always on, and I have a regular telephone plugged into a USB dongle. I pick up the phone, I dial, I talk, I hang up, I pay a quarter of the price of Vonage.
The only disadvantage I suffer is that I cannot receive calls via Skype. Not much of an issue, I receive on my mobile. Skype In via a Google network solves this though and offers a network to Skype, and a new advertising market to Google.
Happy Happy Joy Joy to all shareholders I should think.
Google frightens me. I know their motto is "Do no evil" but ...
Consider this:
* They have one of the world's largest compute clusters.
* They have the demonstrated capability to use that cluster effectively.
* They've practically centralized all of the web in their cache. Even though you can ask for a site to be removed from the cache, I expect that all that does is hide the cache from the outside world - google still has a copy.
* Now they have all your email too, if you've signed up for a gmail account. If you haven't, chances are that someone you communicate with has a gmail account. So they have some of your email too.
* They have some link with the spooks - I've seen job ads from Google for the East Coast which require security clearance.
* If in fact they're going to do VOIP, I think it's just to get VOIP centralized as well.
Maybe your favourite TLA is paying them to do this. Who knows how much money they have.
Certainly Google has the capability if not the intent to do a lot of evil.
And I'm not sure they're all that clean - look at the way they cozied up to China and the way the Abu Ghraib images vanished out of their image caches. In one case they're supporting evil, and in the other case they're hiding evil.
Just press * on your phone to replace a few common words :)
For a start, you're paying your broadband costs.
Here in the UK, I have a deal with Bulldog (4Mb line, non-VoIP phone included) as a monthly fee. All calls to landline phones in the UK are unlimited and 'free'. On top of that, however, I have signed up with voipuser and outgoing VoIP (including calls routed to POTS) is 'free' including international calls to quite a lot of areas (Hong Kong, USA, Australia etc.). It's 'free' because incoming calls are made to premium rate numbers which subsidise the outgoing costs. I'm not sure how much longer this service might last...
I can't see what Google has to offer over this.
Did he inhale?
Got to Love Google!!!
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
How about a mobile that can sense your wifi ,can connect to your PC and use direct PHONE->SKYPE via the mobile, and not pay a cent!!!!!
The first GENIUS ^H^H^H^H^H manager with a clue that puts this through will have a winner, but we know that cell phone networks like only features for phones that can make money , so the makers wont do it, unless someone makes a wifi+java combo that allow s3rd parties to tap into wifi voip calls.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I have been using SIPgate since they launched in the UK. They provide (free) numbers in nearly all area codes, incoming calls are free and calls to other VoIP phones are free. You only have to spend money to pay for outgoing calls to standard phones.
See sipgate.co.uk
A latent existence
(please note that this slogan has been copyrighted and patented. Re-production without permission will lead to prosecution.)
I wonder if Googles VoIP plans are related to it's interest in dark fiber here in the states?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
How about a dedicated google ISP? They already have a cache of damn near everything. Sign me up!
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
I'm baffled at people's failure to see how this would trivially make a fair amount of money.
Google already gets a ton of revenue from targetted advertising. People really do click on those ad links, and Google really does get a cut. But note first that there is a big difference between clicking on the link and actually ordering a product. Note second that the difference between calling the vendor and buying the product is smaller. I'm sure that many vendors would be much happier to have people call them, where they can pitch them more easily than any web page. But to make sure people use this a lot, you have to make it easy, and no different from making a phonecall. But then, once you've gone that far, you might as well offer the VOIP for cheap or for free and use what amounts to an interactive Yellow Pages funding model. You probably do have to cap people's calling at some amount, but if they make the service anything like gmail, it will be a nice, high number. And this won't replace cell-phones for many people. But local and long distance phone prices, which have been down to 3 cents or fewer per minute, probably just did crash all the way to zero.
Babar
Well I think the purpose is brand development,
it may be the case that google is the least
popular in the UK, and they are doing this to boost interest.
Anotehr possibility is that in the UK google has offices, and they wish to lower telephone tax by
getting everyone to use internet lines for phone conversations.. Not to mention the potential of being wiretapped by the british government.
Just a few of the ideas I can think of..
Of course this is all speculation, I'm not british..
Just say no to license servers!!