Last month Skype was in talks to acquire VoIP startup Gizmo5. It was a perfect backup plan in case all that IP litigation didn’t work out. – Gizmo5’s SIP infrastructure could theoretically replace Skype’s proprietary P2P back end.
After the Skype settlement, though, Gizmo5’s strategic value to Skype sort of plummeted. In the meantime, Google bought them, say multiple sources with knowledge of the deal, for around $30 million in cash. The deal is done, say our sources, and will be announced shortly.
Gizmo5 is a good fit with a number of Google products. Google Talk allows voice calls between users but has no PSTN link to allow incoming or outbound calls to real phones. Gizmo5 does this well already.
And Google Voice is a great VoIP and phone identity service, but they have no endpoint for calls. Gizmo5, which by the way already integrates with Google Voice, is a soft phone end point for Google phone users. In other words, you will be able to make and receive calls to your Google Voice phone number from your computer.
This looks to me like Gizmo5 will be the glue that puts Google Voice and Google Talk together into a single product. And that product looks a lot like a Skype competitor.
Gizmo5, which was founded in April 2003, has raised $6 million to date, plus an unspecified amount from founder/CEO Michael Robertson. Prior to Gizmo5, Robertson gained notoriety with his founding of MP3.com and later MP3tunes (which has led to big music suing both the company and himself personally).
We’ve reached out to Gizmo5 and Google for comment.
I heard they (Google) are acquiring AdMob for $750 million in stock.
Is this confirmed?
yes! http://www.admob.com/google
If it’s confirmed then why isn’t TC writing about it!?
3/4 of a billion dollars is a significant acquisition to even the largest of companies.
Just released information from google i presume… Came through on the twitter feed at 12:17 est.
i think we tipped em off: http://www.tech...acquires-admob/
yes.
http://googlebl...with-admob.html
I guess google plan to dominate once and for all the mobile market…. I think the future of the web is in the mobile space…. Now that google have their own mobile OS… it’s almost over for the competition……
Great news! (I mean Gizmo5, Admob should be discussed elsewhere.)
I had been afraid that the Google Voice integration of Gizmo5, which dated back to the Grandcentral days, would be cancelled one day.
GV + G5 = my US phone number in Germany.
Hopefully the money helps Michael Robertson in his lawsuits with the music industry.
You herd correctly: http://twitter....atus/5563607532
Good one for a very low value
And i HATE GOOGLE FOR THAT.
Now I need to cancel my Gizmo account and go elsewhere…
I was a huge fan of Michael Robertson’s Mp3.com, it was revolutionary! All independent artists had a way to distribute music as Mp3 and make moneys, but Universal saw it as a threat and killed it.
I’m looking forward to a real VOIP version of Google Voice on Android products.
It’s hard to believe how old mp3.com is. I think it was 1999? If you think about what the web was like back 10 years ago, it was a definitely a revolutionary service, and very fun to use. There was certainly a lot of awful music on there, but there were some gems. It wasn’t until they tried to get move into the commercial space that they got the pants sued off of them.
But wow… i can;’t believe that was 10 years ago.
They’ve also just announced the acquisition of ‘AdMob’ for a cool $750M. http://bit.ly/3xryYH
Whoops, that’s what you get for proof reading your own comments
Here’s the email they sent out:
From: omar-hamoui
Subject: Google to Acquire AdMob
Google to Acquire AdMob
November 2009
Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.
AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.
After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:
*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.
*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.
*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.
*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.
You can read more about this deal at http://www.admob.com/google.
Omar
Looks like yet another wise step to world domination.
When you have $20B+ cash why waste time and try to create something when you can buy it and build on top of it? Its like asking a pro baseball team to never trade for or sign free agent talent and that everyone should come up from their farm system
Well there goes another service I will stop using. Google is just tuning into another large company that acquires vs. inovates. I don’t want google harvesting my phone call data.
In the case of Gizmo5, I can’t see Google making it any worse than it already was. If anything Gizmo5 should get better now.
I really DO hope Murdoch pulls his content from Google.
And I DO hope he will form an alliance of important content partners to join him.
Google needs to be slowed down significantly. Otherwise all that will remain is the GoogleNet.
I wonder what they liked so much about Gizmo5? Gizmo5 just uses SIP, couldn’t google have saved 30 million dollars and make a SIP gateway rather than buy Gizmo5?
Regardless, I am hoping to see some more Google Voice and SIP integration soon.
They’ve bought talent with expertise in this area + the product. It’s faster and probably more cost effective way of doing things )
It’s not about the technology being worth $30 million – It’s about getting to market six months faster which could make or break the service’s success.
Exactly, it’s a competitive push – not against Skype as mentioned in the article, but against Microsoft’s Exchange 2010. Believe it or not, they’re shoring up their enterprise offerings. They’ll give all this away to the consumer for free, and even take a loss (just like with Gmail), (a) to keep consumer using Google in general and, more importantly, (b) to compete in the Enterprise space.
Google is doing all it can for its android platform.
Also on the news this hour: Ford tries as hard as it can to sell cars; Boeing also seen encouraging people to fly instead of drive.
Competing with Skype on the voice/video desktop side of things will be tough one but Google definite carries a strong mobile battle axe.
I wonder if this is why G5 dropped the residential plan like a hot potato last week.
Makes sense, like Google voice.
Wonder if you’ll have to listen to an ad before placing a call ?
Google is on a holiday Shopping spree just before Christmas ….
Wow. This is great.
Awesome, using Gizmo5’s GUAVA, Droid handset, Google Voice, I now have unlimited voice, unlimited SMS, and unlimited data on the Verizon network for the price of their Data Only Plan. This setup also functions for free on WiFi, and I salivate for the day when nationwide wireless access becomes a public utility.
For too long the carriers have juiced their profits with arcanely asymmetric pricing around artificially walled gardens for functionality deemed to be distinct. The time has come to dumb the pipe, and it looks like Goog just fired a serious salvo.
Another domination step. I guess my only question is quickly becoming this – when all communication and data is perfectly, seamlessly integrated by Google will all that information be harnessed for good, evil, or the Galactic AC?
now the big question. will google soon allow free outbound PSTN calls through a SIP device with this combination. if so this is the beginning of the end of paid telephone!!!
I am hoping that with this acquisition we will see free outbound calls to PSTN #’s in the near future. (hopefully not just locked into Gizmo5 SIP, but that is likely what will happen since Google hasn’t opened up to any other SIP provider…) That is the piece that Google Voice is missing, so if that isn’t what they are planning then I am not sure how they are going to use Gizmo5.
I also hope that Google makes Opensky a free service not limited to only 3 minute calls. This would help the masses of SIP users to continue to communicate with friends and family that use the closed Skype network.
On the G5 forums it was mention that the Opensky service was axed along with the Residential plan earlier this month.
I used Opensky last night. It still works, it just has the 3 minute call limit in place.
Unless they disabled it today.
I think that Opensky is already dead. It doesn’t appear on their website and in my account anymore. Some say that it violates Skype’s TOS by giving your password to Gizmo5.
skypeusername@opensky.gizmo5.com still appears to be working with a 3 minute limit. No skype password needed.
Thanks Google. It’s time to make free international calls.
Yes and please release Google Voice worldwide.
Congrats to Michael and the Gizmo5 team. It’s great to see another successful exit from a San Diego startup.
If I were Skype I’d be watching this very closely, this is THE competition. Which will be great for the consumer as they compete against one another to offer the best product. Game on!
Being able to send and receive calls from one’s Google Voice number would be awesome. Make it free with the mobile ads company you just acquired, Google.
To the R.E.M. tune….
“It’s the end of the telcos as we know it,
and I feel fine!”
As a long time Gizmo user and more recent GV user I think this is a great acquisition, I look forward to making real phone calls from my GrandStream ATA at home and software VoIP client on the road. I hope they build the VoIP client capability into Android real soon – Nokia phones and even Windows Mobile have had that capability for a long time!
I believe they are going to give Vonage and Skype a run for their money. In a couple of years they are going to wipe out small voip players and acquire the biggies like Vonage or Skype.
Google Voice and Gizmo5 are already integrated enough to provide free Internet calling to and from the PSTN, something that even Skype doesn’t offer.
http://bit.ly/4F8csf
I think they plan on integrating it with android.
This smells fishy. Not long ago AT&T allowed VOIP on it’s 3G network for the iPhone and now Google buy Gizmo5. Is VOIP the future of telephony?
Yes.
I was very surprised to read this announcement.
Google is their knight in shining armor for an otherwise floundering company.
However the acquisition is a positive step for all VoIP related companies since the demise of Vonage left a bitter taste in all investors mouth’s.
been using the GIZ & GOOVOICE for like 3 years.
Awesome to see them join forces.
Got damn android platform is looking good.
I am a palm user and love the prer but i dont see how palm stands a chance against, andoird,apple & microsoft (they have some ghreat plans ) exchange 2010 is looking like an awesome platform.
I guess it was just a matter of time before Google moved into VOIP but surprising it has happened.
Congratz AdMob on the GOOG M&A!
damn, this makes me happy. i love my google voice, but functionality was limited, to put it mildly. when are they going to release it to the masses? when is it going to all be integrated?
Are they going to integrate Gizmo5 and GoogleTalk?… then it’s gonna be super if they do…
Definitely a puzzling acquisition considering that Google already has Gtalk.
Google acquisition of Gizmo5 would bring a much terrible technology for its products, Google could integrate Gizmo5 technologies into GoogleTalk, the result could be great it would give the search giant a beach head in the area of SIP, it could challenge Skype someday. That day has already come with the acquisition of Gizmo5.
Most of the technologies Google got through acquisitions only…
http://www.tech...isition-map.jpg
gizmo5 … it’s one closer step to GoogleTV…
Well this is a good news for everyone using the google and gizmo5 integration with ATA adapter. Hope gizmo5 ends up with unlimited free outgoing call features just like the incoming calls. If someone needs info on how to set up the ATA adapter for this service, you can try the tutorial on http://www.exoticpages.info