Ok so I’m the last to write about Google’s announcement this morning on its acquisition of Global IP Solutions, a major provider of IP-based communications infrastructure with not only its voice and video codecs but also voice and video engines that mean simply “supply me with an Internet connection, a microphone and a set of speakers” and we’ll handle the conversation on your PC or smartphone.

Combine this acquisition with Google’s experience with Google Talk and Google Video Chat, its acquisition of Grand Central to become Google Voice, of On2 for its video codec (used by Skype amongst others) and of Gizmo, Google now has a full set of the underlying tools required to bring out some interesting communications offerings. Can Google integrate these tools, and overcome the inherent management and organization integration issues, to deliver a coherent and effective communications offering? What will we see as end user offerings? And how will Google work with the competition?

After all four weeks ago I had a demonstration at GIPS of a video call received on an iPad (notice I only said “to”). And, as I reported at the time, they basically affirmed that we should be seeing video calling supported on mobile smartphones before year end. Perhaps with a GIPS mobile video engine. Will this now simply be an Android offering or will their offerings also involve smartphone video calling support for Apple’s iPhone/iPad and, say, RIM’s BlackBerry?

It’s interesting to note that I’m already observing the Skype – Google competition in my GMail window. Hover your cursor over the appropriate location at a sender’s name and I get one of two “click-to-call” options: to converse with a contact using Google Talk/Video or to converse directly with the same contact in Skype voice, chat or video:

Google has long been a customer of GIPS for its voice technology and more recently for its video technology on Android. As have Nortel, Cisco (Webex), Communigate (one of the world’s largest suppliers of enterprise email services), Yahoo, IBM/Lotus and many others for both its voice and video technology. It will make for an interesting world of co-opetition.

Other bloggers have made some interesting points:

Thomas Howe, Voyces.com in Tick, Tock, Core, Edge implies that, with the pendulum swinging from the core to the edge, IP-communications infrastructure is going to be supported primarily by two players, Skype and Google:

More important, though, is what these battle lines say about the other players. Which is to say, these guys aren’t even on the battlefield. If fellow Cape Codder David Isenberg is right, and we are in the era of the dumb network, then anyone not-Skype and not-Google is not in the running. Although I agree, appreciate and applaud Orange’s work with their core (in particular, the API program), where are they in this battle? Where is AT&T? Now, doesn’t Verizon’s deal with Skype seem much smarter? To me, it does.

Voxeo’s Dan York, in Google buys GIPS for $68 million – to take on Skype? Apple? Microsoft? gives a short course in IP Communications 101 to explain Google’s motives for this acquisition by pointing out where the real battleground lies:

The issue is that while the control channel is increasingly around the open standard of SIP, which anyone can implement, the “codecs” used in sending media from one endpoint to another have long been a proprietary battleground, particularly with regard to wideband (or “HD audio” as some call it). Yes, there have been and are standards, but usually there have been intellectual property or licensing issues. Now, there is work within the IETF to create a standard wideband codec (and as I wrote earlier, Skype is involved with this effort) but that may take some time and the outcome is not known right now.

But there’s one aspect to this acquisition that can tend to get overlooked – cross licensing. When I worked in the NMR spectroscopy industry during its early evolution in the 1970’s, the two major players (Varian and Bruker) would be filing and acquiring patents and then suing each other. But the final outcome was that both players set up cross licensing arrangements such that the entire NMR spectrometer market benefited by always being able to benefit from the best of both companies’ innovation. And it all subsequently contributed to the rise of Magnetic Resonance imaging that plays such an important role in today’s medical imaging space across six or seven vendors. Will we see Google and Skype cross-licensing their technologies so that overall IP-based communications offerings can ultimately provide best-of-breed services to both their customer bases?

Bottom line: What I see emerging is a communications market where each of Google and Skype will continue to bring forth unique communications offerings that may appear somewhat competitive to their respective customers. Recall the final value add is in the customer benefits exposed by the user interface, not the underlying technology. As a result we can expect a world of co-opetition and cross licensing such that customer offerings by either party are not held back by some intellectual property dispute that really relates to technology and infrastructure in which the customer has no interest. In the end its about growing a bigger market for the benefit of all.

Other posts:

• Alec Saunders on Voyces.com: Google Targets Skype
• Alec Saunders on Saunderslog: GIPS acquired by Google. How does Abramson pick them?
• Rich Tehrani on TMCNet: Google Buys GIPS – Here’s Why where he provides a short history of GIPS and then analyzes some interesting reasons behind what may have motivated Google.
• Garrett Smith on Smith on VoIP: Google the service provider

Update: Andy has written Congrats to The Great Team At GIPS – it’s his 18th client who has been acquired and the second acquisition by Google. He has also given me credit for the small role I played in introducing him to GIPS:

And with this acquisition, for me and my agency, Comunicano, the number of companies to “exit” or in this case “get bought” in the last 8 years now has hit 18. Alec Saunders referenced that feat in his very well written post yesterday. GIPS came to my agency and I in the same way the other 17 had. We were asked to work with them. In this case the door opener was trusted friend and colleague, Jim Courtney, who has known Emerick Woods for longer than most dating back to their days at Quarterdeck. Jim always said that Emerick is the consummate professional, and someone who knows how to win. Looks like Jim’s matchmaking ability came through.

Full disclosure: GIPS CEO Emerick Woods was the Vice-President, Internet of Quarterdeck Corporation in the mid-1990’s who became a mentor to the author on several business development projects at Quarterdeck involving partnerships with ISP’s of the time. Over the past 14 years, Emerick, in his capacity as CEO of several startups, which have gone on to be sold, has hired the author at various times for his business development services. The author, however, has no business relationship with Global IP Sound.

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This week I am attending the fourth Emerging Communications Conference, or eComm America 2010, with the byline “What’s Next in Telecom, Mobile and Internet Communications”. The first morning was probably one of the best overall sessions for providing an update of where several major players are taking their offerings and how they are contributing to bring more value add into real time communications experiences.

For example:

Erik Winkler, CEO of Bit Torrent, whose  peer-to-peer file transfer service gets caught up in the Net Neutrality debate since their service has the potential to take over all the traffic to an end user during a download, talked about management of congestion and differentiated it as an issue that is independent of management of content issues. Offering a solution that represented a win for consumers, the communications industry and publishers, he talked about taking a “congestion control approach” to address the problem with recommendations that leave management of content out of the issue:

• manage for congestion
• manage in a protocol agnostic manner
• meter fairly
• re-think download caps since they have no obvious link to congestion
• incent network friendly behavior

Next up was Craig Walker, Group Product Manager, Google Voice who talked about moving communications into the cloud. (As a hint to Google’s overall tactics, I had attended a Mobile Monday event in Toronto two weeks ago; the feature presentation talked about “moving communications into the cloud” from a mobile device perspective.) Craig started out with the economic arguments for this shift, eliminating server hardware and oversight resources from a business’s communications costs. As a result a startup can generate interesting communications applications without having to deal with the capital cost overhead of a traditional telco. And he concluded with an overview of Google Voice and how it can provide a person with a “Find Me, Follow Me” single number to reach the person at any of multiple end point devices, while at the same time managing the voice mail that can arise from having multiple “numbers” to reach those end points.

Next we learned some insight into the U.S. National Broadband plan from Carlos Kirjner, Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. His three major discussion points: “Why the Plan?”, “The ‘Aha’ Moments” and “How to Make It Better”:

Why: Congress mandated it but there’s really a fundamental revolution, at a level similar to the introduction of the printing press and electricity, taking place that will impact the U.S. economy

The Aha’s: The need to consider the entire ecosystem that brings together a national broadband infrastructure: not simply connectivity but also devices, applications, network, consumer issues, regulatory issues and legal constraints. He went on to define what FCC sees as the role of government including competition policy that will drive and foster innovation, assets to be managed such as spectrum allocation, universal service mechanisms and, not to be overlooked, laws, rules and standards for key sectors.

With respect to competition he emphasized the importance of tracking and benchmarking actual behavior, lowering barriers to entry, device competition, application innovation and empowering consumers. In closing his third major point was to ask for feedback while noting that real data beats analyses which, in turn, beats out opinions when it comes to setting policies.

After the morning break, we heard from Jonathan Rosenberg, Skype’s Chief Technology Strategist, whose presentation on Social Sharing 2.0 and the role of Real Time Communications will be the subject of a separate post.

Jonathan was followed by one of his former Cisco colleagues, Cullen Jennings, a Distinguised Engineer in the CTO office at Cisco, on the subject of Identity for Global Communications and that least common denominator of voice calling identity, the phone number. Cisco’s proposed ViPR technology combines a Distributed Hash Table, the PSTN and SIP to provide “Blue Sky Computing” that can validate that a number being called is actually reaching the party whom one really wants to communicate with for privacy or security reasons. It’s a peer-to-peer solution that has implications for communications business models.

The morning session concluded with two product announcements; both designed to provide intelligent business communications solutions that facilitate PBX-type functionality for managing calls to the appropriate end point within a business’s ecosystem: Ringio (a startup launched yesterday) and CounterPath’s new Nomadic PBX. Both could be represented as solutions for a mobile Call Center with different approaches to the issue and target markets.

Bottom Line: Overall I came out this session with a lot to absorb but impressed with not simply the thinking behind these offerings but also the execution that is taking place to make these solutions a reality.

Note re photos: Photo by James Duncan Davidson, the show photographer.

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So it’s finally resolved. The Skype spinout from eBay will involve Skype’s founders as investors and board members while contributing a cash investment. Skype finally owns the core intellectual property required for Skype to operate at its current cost levels. eBay gets the cash they were looking for but 5% less of the new Skype. Canadians still get to invest $16.75 each through the government operated Canada Pension Plan. Marc Andreesen gets involved with another major Internet play. Mike Volpi and Index Ventures are out of the picture. Lawyers and consultants are probably heftily rewarded for all the litigation activity leading to the final resolution. Incessant speculation on Skype Journal’s Skype 5.x Public Chat about how to get around JoltID’s Global Index software will finally cease (well, maybe).

While I have put links to several posts leading up to the resolution below it has been most interesting to read various bloggers comments on the resolution and the future direction for Skype:

Phil Wolff at Skype Journal sums up the numbers in his post, Sold! The Bullets and values the JoltID intellectual property at $275 million. (Phil gets credit for the graphic above, by the way.)

Om picks the winners and losers on My Thoughts on the Skype Settlement: Winners & Losers Scorecard. He points out the “great spin quote” from Silver Lake as a leftover from the “PR spin” days prior to the transparency that comes with social networking. Come on, guys. We’ve all seen the depositions and emails. As for the future, Om comments:

No Silver Lining?: One person who I totally feel for is Silverman, the current CEO of Skype. He gets to run a company which will have the looming presence of its founders.

Whatever the press spin might say, the new investor group is like a poisoned well. It will be a polarized group, always looking over their shoulders. Silverman is going to need to keep a lot of people happy, and those board meetings with nearly two-dozen people aren’t going to be fun, either. But as Biggie Small once said:

“It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.”

Both Kara Swisher at All Things Digital, in All Is Forgiven: “It’s a Clean Slate,” Says Andreessen About Lawsuit-Mad Skype Co-Founders, and Dan Primack at PEHub, in 5 Skype Questions for Marc Andreessen, interviewed Marc Andreeson of Andreeson Horowitz. The common statement about his relationship with Niklas and Janus:

We have not been in business with them before, so we don’t have any baggage at all. Our view is that they’re two super-creative founders. We’ve known lots of legendary founders, and they are all different and have things that make them unique. We include ourselves in that from past experiences. We view ourselves as a pro-founder firm, so we like the idea of founders being involved. It’s a net positive.

Martin Varsavsky. CEO of FON, a company partially financed by many of the same players in the Skype sale, restricts his comments to his thoughts on the future of Skype – where is Skype vulnerable?, where are its strengths? – in Why it may make sense to buy Skype back. His overriding statement:

Skype is simple. Michael Arrington and all of Silicon Valley may find Google Voice amazing but is the average global citizen ready to use it? Massively use it? You download Skype, you find your friends on Skype, you talk. And, if you don’t find them, you Skype out. And when you talk you can also do video. I LOVE video calls on Skype. I used to use them for people I really cared about, relatives, close friends. Now I even do business calls on video with Skype. It just gives you more of a sense of what is going through the other person´s mind. And Skype is the leader on video quality. So simplicity plus video may be a good way to beat flat plans from telcos and avoid being Tivoed. If the video services can migrate to mobile phones Skype is on to something.

Andy Abramson, in The Skype Suit Is Settled-Now Business Can Get On, comments:

I’m just glad the suit is settled between eBay and Skype. Now a lot of things that have been held back can finally move forward. In many ways the settlement is a good thing. The return of the original founders means disruption will continue, and new ideas will flourish. It also means Skype as a business or brand will now have a chance to prove its worth.

Alec Saunders, in eBay’s big mistake; Why the JoltID license was inevitable, concludes:

The lesson in all this? Deals involving technology licenses and acquisitions are common in business. When acquiring a technology asset, buyers must acquire the necessary control needed in order to protect the business.  Either buy, or license in perpetuity, what you need to prosper. Unless your intent is to immediately begin work on a substitute technology, a license for core technology that needs renewal is a sure way to find yourself caught by the short-hairs in a future negotiation.

The bottom line is that Skype is now in a position to focus on building future communications software and services without the distraction of depositions, legal wrangling and media curiosity. Provided he can navigate through a 23-member board with diverse interests and experiences, Josh Silverman can build the real communications software business of providing infrastructure for conversations while having a wealth of technology and business connections available in an advisory role.

Previous Posts:

Om’s trail:

• Skype, Founders Settlement in the Works (Nov. 1)
• Further Details Emerge As Skype & Its Founders Close to Settlement (Nov. 3)
• Skype Founders Fight Their Way Into the New Skype (Nov. 5)
• My Thoughts on the Skype Settlement: Winners & Losers Scorecard (Nov. 6)

Kara Swisher (All Things Digital):

• Volpi and Index Ventures Out of Skype Deal, the Lawsuit-Happy Founder Twins In (Nov. 3 with lots of links to related stories)
• I Love the Smell of Settlement in the Morning: Skype Founders Set to Get 10 Percent, Option to Buy Three Percent More and Two Board Seats (Nov. 3)
• All Is Forgiven: “It’s a Clean Slate,” Says Andreessen About Lawsuit-Mad Skype Co-Founders (Nov. 6)

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Following a link from Dan York’s update to his post outlining technical details of Skype for SIP, I found a link to this post from IfByPhone’s Irv Shapiro: Why Skype for Asterisk is more important than Skype for SIP.

First, Irv has done perhaps the best articulation yet differentiating Skype for Asterisk from Skype for SIP:

Skype for Asterisk, which is still in closed beta, is a true Asterisk channel driver. This allows Asterisk based solutions to make, receive and transfer Skype calls. A significant capability of the SFA solution is its support for terminating a call to a Skype user name, for example a PC based user of the Skype client.

Skype for SIP is a very different animal. This service provides VOIP trunk support for existing SIP based PBX systems, which may include Asterisk. Unlike SFA where calls may be placed to any Skype user, SFS calls may only be terminated to PSTN end points.

Irv goes on to provide his view on how this plays in the Voice/Telco 2.0 marketplace. Then he provides an example of where he sees the benefit of SFA for hosted services:

From our perspective as a cloud telephony company, providing hosted telephone applications, SFA is much more interesting. While either service would allow us to provide IVR services to Skype users, the SFA Asterisk channel driver architecture allows us to terminate calls into call centers with no PSTN transport. Each call center Agent would just utilize a headset connected to a computer running the traditional Skype application. Customers calls would be able to originate from either a PSTN device or a Skype client, then route through the Ifbyphone IVR infrastructure and terminate to a call center via Skype’s computer to computer transport. This has the potential to change the cost structure associated with supporting call centers. A Skype based call center would not require a PBX or for even any centralized telephony components. The call center agents could be virtually located anywhere in the world on high quality Internet connections.

Keep in mind that calls terminated on Skype, as demonstrated on the 3 Skypehone service, have no associated termination charges. Long time Skype-based call center provider OnState has already demonstrated this business model; their hosted OnState Call Center service eliminates the need for a call center PBX. While a (prospective) customer can call in via several modes (Skype Online number, DID numbers, 800 numbers, Skype or click-to-call from a website), all the calls are terminated on Skype via their agent client.

Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch has, in a reverse manner, demonstrated this cost advantage also in his post, All Google Voice Needs Is a Little More SIP and Skype’s Game Changes, where he points out that, if Skype for SIP did terminate calls on a Skype client (i.e. – supported SIP—>Skype), then one could terminate Google Voice calls at a Skype client. But, as I have commented on that post and included in Skype for SIP: Sorting Through the Issues, Skype for SIP supports three types of connections and “SIP—>Skype” is not one of them.

Irv demonstrates that Skype for Asterisk has some interesting potential; it’s simply going to require more creative innovation that goes beyond simply making call connections through a SIP interface. It’s a matter of invoking Alec Saunders Voice 2.0 Manifesto which points out that the value lies in the applications.

Yesterday’s announcement of Grand Central’s rebirth as Google Voice drew a lot of attention from both the mainstream media and blogger world. In following the IP-based communications world over the past three years, I have come to believe that the only potential real time conversation service provider challenger to Skype could come from Google. It has huge user registration numbers at a world class scale; however, its primary business is built around how many ways can one drill down within Search and then offer contextually relevant advertising. On the other hand, they appear to be looking to complement search-embedded activities, such as Search within GMail, with real time conversation capabilities.

For instance the recently launched GMail Voice and Video chat allows users to migrate to real time conversations directly off an email message. Great in the context of building a dialogue out of an email’s subject and content. I’ve tried it and it works but have not had reason to use it in my everyday activity; on the other hand, if I  find reason to use it, it’s there and easy to launch. A great example of voice-enabling a conversation in the context of an ongoing dialogue.

Show me a platform that is not supported by Google’s GTalk chat offering. Almost every PC and mobile device I receive for evaluation is supported by GTalk. Yet, I only have about ten contacts on GTalk and may get a message once every week or two. There’s a reason Alec Saunders came out recently to say “Ditching all IM Systems except Skype!”. On the other hand, GTalk is there; it’s handy if someone contacts me via GTalk.

While Google Voice lists its entire feature set here, Kim Peterson’s post, “Free long-distance? Oh yeah, Google;s going there”, on the Topstocks blog at Microsoft’s Money Central, highlights the the top ones:

In a nutshell, here’s what you’ll be able to do with the free program:

1. Get a single phone number that routes calls to your cell, work and home phones simultaneously.

2. Call numbers in the U.S. for free. And call internationally for ridiculously low rates — I’m talking 2 cents a minute to China.

3. Get your voicemail transcribed into e-mail or text messages.

4. Make free conference calls.

5. Get your voicemail on the Web.

Mainstream media, however, could only focus on how Google Voice would provide competition to eBay’s Skype. New York Times’ Miguel Helft starts out with:

“Google stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small, like eBay, which owns Skype, telephone companies and a string of technology start-up firms.”

Ryan Singel at Wired’s Epicenter:

When Google announced its integrated phone service called Google Voice Thursday, it said something very loud.

Google is saying it wants to be the world’s communication hub, and hundreds of companies — ranging from mobile phone operators to Skype to Microsoft better be listening.

Further down the same article, Ben Lilienthal, now general manager of audio services for Citrix Online – and a Skype partner for full service audio conferencing, “isn’t convinced that businesses will move to the service very soon”, Ben went on to say:

“For a consumer, it is a pretty compelling service,” Lilienthal said. “But I think if you are a business user, it’s not necessarily a road you would want to go down. There are a bunch of things business users worry about that consumers don’t. If it doesn’t work, can I get a live person on the phone? Is it reliable? What kind of quality of service can I get?”

Many reporters and bloggers had a chance to upgrade their Grand Central service to Google Voice yesterday. However, being a Canadian I never acquired a Grand Central number for the same reason as fellow Canadian and Fonolo CEO Shai Berger:

….. this problem is not unique. Many similar services don’t extend into Canada. It’s still hard to get a Canadian Skype-In number for example. Ooma has the same problem and when I spoke to some senior people at Ooma last year they cited complicated regulatory issues (including a word I hadn’t heard before: “homologation“. Always like learning a new word). I don’t expect Grand Central/Google Voice to address this any time soon and I don’t hold it against them — the extra hassle is probably not worth it in the early stage of the game.

But Shai also gives a more generic reason for not being a user of Grand Central:

That 2nd item is a bigger issue because it effects everyone, not just Canadians. Our mental model for interacting with phones is that “if you called me from number X” I can hit redial to call you back. (Or I can store that number in my address book for later.) To fix this we either have to change user behavior (tough) or spoof the caller-ID (technically doable but quasi-legal). The only Voice 2.0 company I know of that has solved this problem is Truphone, which does transmit your Truphone number as to the destination. [Author’s note: SkypeOut also provides callerID using either your Skype Online number or your “Skype registered” mobile phone number.]

But there’s also a user interface issue when you look at how a call is placed. Further down in Kim’s post (and similarly described in the NYT post referenced above):

Here’s how it works: You call into your voice mail on Google Voice, and from there you get transferred to a dial tone. You can call any number at that point [author’s italics]. You also have a central Web site that will show your voice mails and manage your account.

So I have to call one number in order to call the number I want (and, at that point, there’s probably no linkage to my device’s native address book), eh?

And, finally, Om Malik points out a few issues, including how users will pay for international calls:

Just as a warning, the upgrade to Google Voice won’t allow you to take your Grand Central address book with you, since the new system uses Google Contacts. In addition, the service doesn’t work with those of you who have Google Apps accounts; you’ll need Gmail accounts. Lastly, they make you use Google Checkout to pay for international minutes. No thanks — I am happy paying with PayPal and/or credit cards. [author’s italics]

Let’s go back to Skype (and iSkoot):

1. I want to locate a phone number (or SkypeID) in my native mobile handset address book, hit the green “Call” button on my mobile phone and launch a voice call. Real simple UI here. On a mobile device, such as BlackBerry or Nokia N-series, I can do this with iSkoot for making both Skype-to-Skype or SkypeOut calls.
2. I have 14 years invested in my current office and mobile phone numbers. I’m not ready to make any changes. iSkoot, on my BlackBerry, and Truphone on both BlackBerry and iPhone work with each device’s existing phone number.
3. SkypeOut (and iSkoot, when making SkypeOut calls from a BlackBerry or Nokia N-Series S60 phone) provides my mobile phone number as a callerID. A party who needs to return my call can simply click on the number and reach me. (and, if in my native address book, readily see who has called).
4. With Skype I can make payments via PayPal or directly on my credit card.

While I will try Google Voice once they expand to supporting Canadian numbers, its modus operandi certainly does not come up to Skype’s standards for a truly user friendly calling experience. On the other hand its call screening, call management and voicemail handling features certainly provide some new challenges for Skype to watch out for.

Bottom line: today we all look for competition in the wireless carrier and mobile smartphone markets. But there are key differentiating features. It’s healthy to see two players such as Skype and Google, both with world scale user bases, in the real time conversation space. But there are differences, in the individual end users will adopt whatever provides the most convenience for his/her individual needs.

Full disclosure: the author has Bell Canada lines for his home office, including fax, requirements while using Rogers Home Phone for family voice calling. He also uses Skype for most of his business conversation requirements, especially long distance and international calling. Just as different smartphones meet different user needs, we’re probably going to find that many of us need multiple services for all our real time conversation needs.

Finally let’s look at one more slide from Skype President Josh Silverman’s analyst presentation earlier this week:

Google has a little bit of work to do to round out an equivalent ecosystem.

Check out Kim’s post for links to several other bloggers’ comments as well.

Andrew Hansen: Skype makes a small ripple, but no Splash with new VM features.

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