Forget Skype, Google Acquires Gizmo5 VoIP Startup Instead

Wow, remember a few weeks ago when Skype was beset by multiple legal actions from its founders and was in talks to acquire VoIP startup Gizmo5 to replace the underlying codebase that they were being sued over? Well things seem to be moving fast in the VoIP world because today, not only did Skype and its founders come to an agreement and save the underlying codebase, but Gizmo5 got acquired after all–just not by who’d we expect.

Google pounced on the peer-to-peer VoIP provider Gizmo5 just as its chances of being acquired by Skype had been dashed. Gizmo5 is an unscaled, but proven peer-to-peer VoIP provider. It has six million users for its SIP-based P2P VoIP service. The service would add the a PSTN link to allow incoming or outbound calls to real phones which Google Voice currently lacks. According to TechCrunch sources, Google has bought Gizmo5 for $30 million, but the official announcement has yet to be made.

According to the Washington Post, Skype was going to purchase peer-to-peer VoIP startup Gizmo5 for around $50 million. The purchase was part of a back-up plan in the event that it’s lawsuit with Joltid resulted in the company not having access to the underlying code Skype uses to make VoIP calls.

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Google Voice Released For BlackBerry, Android Devices

Google released Google Voice for BlackBerry and Android-powered smartphones on Wednesday.

Last month, Google sent invitations to people who signed up to test the service that is based on technology from GrandCentral, which Google acquired in 2007. Google Voice gives users a single phone number that will ring his or her home, work and mobile-phone numbers. Users can control the service to have specific callers ring a particular phone. Callers can also be sent to voice mail, with messages transcribed and e-mailed to the user.

Writing on The Official Google Blog, Vincent Paquet of Google’s voice team and Marcus Foster of Google’s mobile team said the application can be downloaded from a Google site and the Android Market. They also said Google is responding to requests to make outgoing calls easier.

“Previously, to place a call using Google Voice, you had to dial your own Google Voice number from your cell phone or use the Quick Call button online,” they wrote. “With this new mobile app, you can make calls and send SMS messages with your Google Voice number directly from your mobile phone. The app is fully integrated with each phone’s contacts, so you can call via Google Voice straight from your address book.”

They also wrote that Google Voice users will be able to access SMS messages sent to the Google Voice number even if a user’s cell phone doesn’t receive SMS. The app also displays the user’s Google Voice number on outgoing calls and SMS messages.

For people who don’t have a BlackBerry or Android device, a mobile Web version of the Google Voice site can be accessed through a mobile browser, Paquet and Foster wrote. A Google Voice account is required, and the service is only available in the U.S.

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Google Announces Chrome OS - Open Source Competitor

Now it’s Google’s turn to create an operating system. The company announced Chrome OS, "an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks." Expect to see those netbooks running the Google OS in the second half of 2010, and all kinds of PCs running it shortly thereafter.

Like its 9-month-old browser brother Chrome, the Chrome OS will be speedy. It’ll be designed to start up in a few seconds and get you to the web in no time flat, and all applications written for it will also run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. And, it’s all separate from Android, Google’s successful cellphone operating system.

This is going to be big. Really big. Google says we’ll hear more about this world-changing project this fall. Meanwhile, get used to apps like Gmail, Google Apps and Google Calendar, because they’re only the beginning of a lightweight, instant-on, partially cloud-based, secure computing world.

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Federal Trade Commission Investigating the Apple-Google Relationship

The FTC has begun an investigation into possible antitrust violations caused by the often close relationship between two of our favorite companies, Apple and Google. But they look so nice together!

The biggest issue here seems to be that Apple and Google share two directors, in this case Eric E. Schmidt and Arthur Levinson. Both Schmidt and Levinson sit on the boards of the two companies, and a 1941 law prohibits such a relationship when it could reduce natural inter-company competition. The proper term for this is "interlocking directorates."

Google and Apple, of course, compete in several categories: Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari web browsers, Android and Mac OS, YouTube and iTunes, Picasa and iPhoto, and many, many more. Yet the companies’ fates are intertwined, and our faithful government watchdogs want to make sure nothing untoward is happening in the union. We’ll keep you updated if anything interesting develops out of the investigation. [New York Times]

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Google Might Acquire Twitter? Maybe?

Google and Twitter may be in late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter.  Or it is early-stage and the two are simply talking about working on a real-time search engine.

Regardless, Tech Crunch quotes multiple sources that Google wants Twitter. If a deal goes down, it would likely be cash and/or stock and some number north of a rumored valuation of $250 million. Facebook offered $500 mil, but that was an all-stock deal, so Twitter took a pass.

Twitter’s value is in real-time search and its huge community of users and brands. The collection and analysis of information embedded in all of those Tweets in real time is big bucks; skip ads and proceed directly to time-sensitive data mining.

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Google Voice Chatter Could Be a Legal Nightmare

Google’s new telephone service, Google Voice, is receiving generally positive reviews from industry analysts. Some of the features, however, are raising potentially troubling legal issues.

Nearly two years ago, Google bought Grand Central, an Internet-based phone service, and opened it up to a limited number of beta testers. Over the following months, users got increasingly impatient with the lack of new features or upgrades to the service.

It turns out, however, that Grand Central was merely on hold as Google undertook a complete revamping of the service to better integrate it into the Google universe. Current users and new subscribers will be able to read transcripts and search text of their voice mails, make low-cost overseas calls and free calls within the United States, set up free conference calls, and redirect both calls and text messages to up to six different numbers at the same time.

But not surprisingly, given Google’s increasingly dominant online profile, the news that the company is doing for voice what it’s done for virtually every other type of data has raised questions about both privacy and legality. Critics are worried about yet another data stream flowing through the Google server farms.

Scanning Phone Calls

In a widely reported interview, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the new service raises worrisome issues. "It raises two distinct problems," he said. "In the privacy world, it is increased profiling and tracking of users without safeguards. But the other problem is the growing consolidation of Internet-based services around one dominant company."

Since even Google hasn’t figured out how to repeal the laws of economics, the obvious question is how the company will be able to support the undeniably attractive offer of free telephone calls, voice-mail transcriptions, and so on. As with other Google services, the answer is likely to be…

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