Google is in acquisition discussions with telephone management startup GrandCentral, we’ve learned, and we have a high degree of confidence that the deal has actually been closed. We are trying to nail down the acquisition price. Just last week I flagged this company as the most exciting startup we’re currently tracking.
The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for life.” As we change jobs, homes and cell phones, there are a lot of phone numbers to keep track of, and keeping everyone up to date with your most recent phone numbers is a real cost. If you use GrandCentral you can give out a single phone number. What happens when that person calls that number depends on his/her relationship to you, and what you are doing at the time.
The company, which has raised less than $6 million in capital from Minor Ventures (the exact amount has never been disclosed), beta launched just last September. Earlier this year mainstream press and blogger attention heated up.
The company may have received too much press attention before the product was ready, and we reported on some backlash from beta users abandoning the service in March. Still, the company pushed ahead, launching a mobile product and other features.
GrandCentral was recently pitching a second round of financing to Silicon Valley venture capitalists, but broke off discussions abruptly as the Google talks heated up.
I’m speculating on where Google will use GrandCentral, but the synergies with Gmail and GTalk are fairly obvious and could be the next step in Google’s competition with Skype and other instant messaging platforms.
This is, in my opinion, a great move by Google. Grand Central is an awesome productivity and simplifies the lives of users with multiple phones by giving them a single phone number and letting them handle calls via rules. It’s a natural fit with GTalk and Gmail.
Google won’t comment on this story. I have an email in to GrandCentral to see if they’ll confirm.
Good for GC. I’m sure they’ll compliment Google’s expanding portfolio quite well.
Glad for GC, but if Google’s plan is to resurrect GTalk into some significance it’s too bad GC will get dragged along.
God bless America. This is a great country!
What were the revenues for GC? I bet less than $50k
There are only two pieces missing for this part of the platform, one is CRM. I bet GOOG will acquire ZOHO for that void.
The second piece is ______? Hint it is voice related
that’s quick to get acquired.
good for grand central… i think they made the best decision to sellout now, rather than grow it themselves.
This acquisition will help Google strengthen its services if it integrates them. GMail, Google Calendar, and Docs and Spreadsheets, combined with Grand Central and Google Gears could be a wicked package.
To top it all off, they should probably launch the Google Phone too.
woo! i’m excited… hopefully google improves and expands on this. maybe even put integration into their gphone??
(unrelated)
you know, i’m curious to know Michael if you have any thoughts of what a much better buyer Apple would have been to Last.fm. Integration with itunes that WORKS…. limitless data on real-time music trends, one click access to buy a song that you hear on the site, a real community, integration with the ipod. i think it would have been a great and strong fit.
Does anyone know what happened to the company that used to have this domain that was trying to build an RAD-like application creation service?
The idea was very smart but it required custom software on the server-side and client-side which is why we never ended up it. Which I was a good choice on our part because they just vanished one day.
I wonder if this is the some of the same people – if so – it sounds like their change of business plan was right on target…
sorry for the off topic comment but I like those shots next to each commentor’s name. It is really cool to see the RSS associated with their blogs. I have never seen that. It is really stunning. Nice work techcrunch.
The big part of the mobile market is the voice channel. The carriers are cutting off their noses to spite their own faces by overcharging for data and regulating the data channel so much.
Voice is where it is at.
I use GrandCentral. I have tons of numbers from the company
Each one in the family has a GC number.
crap service but lots of users always helps
As a happy user of GrandCentral (415 287 7721 is me) I can say this is a great fit for Google and GC. I’ve met some of their engineers (smart folks) and they created a fantastic service in a very short amount of time. I never experienced the problems other folks had. The service has worked well for me.
My only feature request has been for them to add SMS service through my GC number. They’ve said that they are working on it and at their pace, I’m sure it’ll be coming down the pipe soon.
James- you think it might have been perceived as a conflict of interests where business models were concerned, if Apple wasn’t thinking that it would drive sales to their satisfaction and would instead cannibalize revenue? That’s not how you and I see it, obviously… I am not happy with CBS’ management thus far, but hey, high expectations.
Holy moley! This could be *seriously cool*
If those goes like the Jot acquisition went, I can pretty much expect support to be horrible and unresponsive and development to come to a standstill.
Awesome.
Congrats to the guys at GC. I know there was negative feedback earlier this year, but I’ve found GC to be reliable and robust. I used it primarily during a recent job search and it performed flawlessly.
I sure hope they won’t throw in audio ads into the phone calls
Congrats to the GC team if true. I’d written feedback to the GC team several months back asking them to integrate their address book with GMail’s. I guess they took the suggestion very seriously =)
Some of these aquistions seem to be Google simply burning up cash. This is a good idea but it’s not really Google territory…at least unless Google is planning to take over pretty much every tech thing….oh, ummm, now I get it.
What’s interesting is what this means for similar companies, ala Jangl, Jaxtr, and more. We’ve already seen what’s happened with SKype (with Intel and DT), but even GC doesn’t seem to have a service or model that will appeal to anyone other than geeks. It’s been done before (Ring Central) so good luck to the GOOG on this one, if anyone can, they can. But looking at Jangl and Jaxter, Jangl already has deals in place, Jaxter has a little virality. Split the diff, perhaps, but I’d lay bets on Jangl cause of the team and the momentum.
Wow – sell one telephony startup to Yahoo! – then found another one and sell it to Google! Have to wonder what these guys are going to do next.
I stayed away from using my Grand Central number because i was afraid the service might disappear the next day. It would be a disaster to for me.
But now that Google has them, I feel more comfortable.
It was a good move for Google–routing communication is going to be the key of Global Inbox 3.0.
I love Grand Central: visual voicemail is more efficient, it’s great to be able to move from a Skype call to my mobile phone without hanging up, and the *4 record feature has likely saved my life numerous times since I no longer have to scribble something down while driving.
Isn’t GC a little like Gates’ Unified Communications Revolution?
http://www.micr...nifiedcomm.mspx
local number portability to and away from the service would be a good feature.
i wouldn’t use this for an important number without the confidence that i could port the number away. and i’d be happy to port existing numbers to the service if i knew i could port them out.
Cyrano makes a great point! jot.com was going gangbusters … and then Google aquired them. it’s been 8 months – no announcements. No new users or features. Jot is basically at a standstill in some kind of Google limbo.
I am pretty excited by GrandCentral, except for two showstoppers – the inability to set amount of time before a call goes to message (about 15 seconds, which is too short), and the call-out issue mentioned above. I hope those are addressed soon, and I have this fear that a Google acquisition could lead to a Jot-like limbo. I hope not – GC would be a *great* addition to my Google Apps.
This is a great sale for the Grand Central people and another homerun for their
publicist Andy Abramson!
Let’s look a little down the road. It is hard to understand what advantage this gives Google. GC concept is great, but in reality anyone can do it with a little programming. Eventually everyone in telephony will have call handling options, the question is who will have the customers? Google has not proved themselves in this field.
In fact any of our customers at the Flat Planet Phone Company can set up a GC like application. But what is an application without paying users??
If all you need is a free voicemail number to send you .wav’s by email, try k7.net, which has been around for years. But if this Google thing can route important calls to my cell phone, that might be useful.
I stayed away from using my Grand Central number because i was afraid the service might disappear the next day. It would be a disaster to for me.
But now that Google has them, I feel even less comfortable.
I agree with Nathan… Now that Google has them and you know all history will be kept forever it is not something I would want to use.
Google has obviously acquired this company because the service works into (or interefered with) their idea of what the Google Phone will be.
How do these guys make money?
This is a seriously cool product! Anyone know of a UK version?
Thanks
I’d like to whisper this (so loud the whole room can hear!):
Why not Google(Apple), Gapple, Gaggle, or whatever. Google should buy Apple and make the iPhone their platform. I often wonder what we could have done with the PSP if Google could have developed it. Here’s a chance.
Or, maybe Google is waiting for Apple to iron out the bugs in the iPhone before launching their platform.
Or maybe they will never launch a platform.
Or maybe they’re waiting until neural implants to organize all the info in my brain!
Thanks for listening.
Oh, how about GooeyApple?
Nice service, good pickup by the Google
I wonder what’s next…..Google to acquire the MOON?
I have been enjoying GC for a few weeks now and I hope Google does not stand in its way. I am excited about the prospects of an acquisition by such a big company but at the same time I wonder if it will be a good thing in the short and long term for we subscribers.
[Adam
June 25th, 2007 at 6:45 am
How do these guys make money?]
They are offering the service for free now because they are still in beta and want the most users possible so they can work out all the kinks. I’m sure they planned on charging for the service when they went out of beta, but now that Google is going to buy them out, it will probably remain free. My guess is that Google will find a way to monetize it with some type of advertising.
I’m glad I already have a GC number. I’ve not used it a whole lot but I like the idea. I’ve been holding on to it to let the kinks get ironed out before I move all my numbers to it and set one up for the folks.
I once told my readers what billionaire Michael Lee-Chin said about expanding on what you know to amass a fortune.
Google knows a lot!
I personally think this is great. I think GC is a great service, and idea. My one concern has always been the longevity of the service. Your setting yourself up when you make a statement like “one number for life” life can be a very long time.
I think google will definately help to make the service more legit and strength the validity of the “one number for life”.
Michael, you post URL suggests the company sold for $50 million, did you get any confirmation on the price?
what an awesome piece of the puzzle this would be – perfect for consumer and enterprise use/integration, and certainly the webcall and mobile features were the deal drivers (imho)…
my acq price guess: 140-180 million…there were other bidders. just don’t ask how i know that.
Seems the US is a bit out of touch with the rest of the world to call this new. European telephony providers have offered this sort of service since 2000. Its called an 0700 number.
Also the name isn’t all that original. GrandCentral is the name of a well-established work-flow product for pre-press bureaus and print-houses, and has been in use since before the days of the web.
I’ve like GC, too. I also requested a new feature: conference calling. It’s a standard enough VOIP thing, but they haven’t gotten to it yet. Now I wonder when that will come, if ever.
i love GC, i hope we don’t get ads now :/
Great service, we’ll have to see how well it works post-acquisition, and perhaps the purchase price will give insight into the seriousness of thought on the part of the big G.
Scott, remember that VOIP conference calling company from Scandinavia the was acquired in the last few months? I wouldn’t worry about it taking too long.
Word from GC is it’s not true.
@ASDF when you visit Grand Central the Google logo and acqusition information is on the first page, so it is true.
Hope Google will open GC to open SIP like Gizmo.
DDI are useless if you cannot also redirect via SIP or Asterix.
Just my 02cts.
Jangl is quietly putting together another round, which is supposed to include an investment from a Google competitor in search.