The company may offer a fully-featured VoIP service to compete with Skype

Nov 13, 2009 08:47 GMT  ·  By
Google may offer a fully featured VoIP service to compete with Skype after the Gizmo5 acquisition
   Google may offer a fully featured VoIP service to compete with Skype after the Gizmo5 acquisition

It's official, Google has confirmed the acquisition of VoIP startup Gizmo5. The company hasn't provided any financial details about the deal or what its plans are for Gizmo5, but it said that it would integrate it in some way with Google Voice, the hot new service which enables users to switch between mobile and landline phones while having the same incoming phone number. The acquisition was first rumored a few days ago.

“Today we're pleased to announce we've acquired Gizmo5, a company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. While we don't have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience,” Wesley Chan and Craig Walker, Group Product managers at Google, wrote.

This could mean great things for Google Voice and Google Talk users, but for now, it's not so great for Gizmo5's existing users. Google won't be accepting any new registrations. However, current users will still be able to take advantage of the full service. They won't be able to sign up for a new call-in number though, presumably as Google is switching those over to Google Voice.

No financial details have been released, but previous rumors put the deal at about $30 million, making for a rather poor exit for the investors in the six year-old startup. The company has raised about $6 million from a number of investors and an unspecified amount from its founder and CEO, Michael Robertson up to reported total of $20 million.

Google is scarce on the details except saying there will be some sort of integration with Google Voice. It's safe to assume though that Google will try to roll out a full-blown communications system based on Google Voice, Google Talk, and the newly-acquired technology from Gizmo5. The first step though will be in offering a soft phone for the Google Voice service, allowing users to make and receive calls on their computers. From there, Google could very well offer a complete VoIP service using the Talk infrastructure, Gizmo5 for inbound and outbound calls to the regular phone system, and Google Voice for the unified phone number.