There is talk that search giant Google, Inc. is getting into the commercial Voice-over-Internet Protocol business. Judging from a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by Florida-based VoIP, Inc., the software and services provider has inked a deal with Google to provide a large-scale VoIP offering, similar to that of various carriers such as Vonage and Packet8.
While the search leader currently has its own Google Talk instant messaging-cum-VoIP client, which runs on the open-specification Jabber System, the voice system is not interconnected with any other voice nor telephone network. In fact, Google has a disclaimer on its talk.google.com website that Google Talk is not a telephony service, and cannot be expected to provide such.
We can only speculate on Google’s planned business model, should they indeed pursue setting up a VoIP-based telephone network. The search company is known to earn most of its revenues from advertisements, particularly its pioneering AdSense and AdWords system. Google is also known to offer free services, such as Gmail, in exchange for targeting contextual ads at endusers. It could be possible that Google is considering a free VoIP telephone network built on ads.
Of course, there is also the likelihood that talks on Google’s plan to go into VoIP telephony are just that—talks and plans. Google is known to be a company that follows the “ready, fire, aim” or “build first, earn later” approach to business, where a cool and innovative service is developed and marketed first before coming up with a business model, if at all. But with an aggressive company like Google, you never know what will come next.