Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

Google Voice may finally turn into something useful... Very cool. I have always preferred Gizmo over Skype because they use open standards.

I hope that Google's takeover will improve the quality of Gizmo5 and bring in a strong competitor to Skype.

I tried to replace Skype with Gizmo5, but two major problems made me go back to Skype:

1) Voice quality on the receiver's side is awful, and the caller's side is too quiet.

This may be partly due to my connection– I was using wifi– but Skype worked without issues. I'm not sure whether this is because of the underlying technology, or because of the PSTN link quality.

2) Payments take a couple days to process, whereas Skype payments process in seconds.

That being said, Gizmo5's pricing is markedly better, which is what prompted me to try it out in the first place.

I think Google is definitely capable of fixing the second problem quickly and effectively. And Google's reputation for excellence gives me hope that the overall quality of Gizmo5 will also improve accordingly.

Interesting.

Direct benefits notwithstanding, Google continues to make forays into the mobile world in ways that suggest they are attempting to route around the biggest bottleneck in the whole thing: the price of network access.

It seems that sometime in the future, Google will be able to provide communication services to individuals without the requirement of leasing a non-google medium, like a cell phone or internet connection.

Such a development will make the RIAA vs. the users question seem like discussing the politics of ink distribution in the days before the printing press.

Anybody have information on the details of the acquisition?

How many shares did that 6 million investment buy? Is the 30m buying price all cash or are there stocks/shares involved? Will Gizmo5 keep its current management? Are there incentives for key personnel to stay in place?

X buys Y is fairly superficial information here.

hopefully gizmo on the mac will stop sucking, I have to reinstall gizmo every few weeks because some how the binary gets corrupted and won't start. The only way I can get it to work is to do a reinstall. Other than that issue, it is great to make phone calls totally for free with google voice and gizmo.

Mondays. Because we're Google and we feel like buying stuff.

(See admob acquisition for 750 mil earlier today- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=931306)

This is pretty awesome. Even before the acquisition you could use a combination of Gizmo5 and Google Voice to get a free phone line, but this could make everything even more seamless.

Cool, now maybe I can more easily link my SIP phones and PBXs into Google Voice.

should've been:

"Google acquires Gizmo5; Skype seeks fresh underwear"