Word came out today that Google acquired the VoIP company Gizmo5. Gizmo5 offers VoIP calling similar to Skype only Gizmo5 uses open standards.
Gizmo5’s service was tightly integrated with GrandCentral, the web-based phone organizer, so that Gizmo5 was the only way to turn an incoming call to a GrandCentral number into an incoming VoIP call to Asterisk or another SIP device. Once Google bought GrandCentral and rebranded it Google Voice it was really no surprise that Google might soon snatch up Gizmo5.
This is the second big payout for Gizmo5 CEO Michael Robertson. Robertson made a fortune early on when he parlayed his MP3.COM domain name into a business he later sold to Vivendi Universal for $372 million. Congrats, Michael!
Update 13 Nov 2009: Oh, and one other important point. Google now has the parts now to essentially become their own phone company. I’m not talking about an AT&T-style phone company but more of a Vonage one. They own a SIP origination and termination service (Gizmo5), their own DIDs (Google Voice), their own points of presence across the country, and miles and miles of their very own dark fiber.
This makes me think that when Apple/AT&T’s kicked Google Voice off the iPhone they saw it as a much bigger threat than it was at the time. At least AT&T may have. With this acquisition, Google can now easily provide phone service to iPhones without those calls ever touching the Public Switched Telephone Network (or PSTN).
It’s only a matter of time before Google does.