
Google Has Acquired Gizmo5  - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/exclusive-google-has-acquired-gizmo5/
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jonknee
Google Voice may finally turn into something useful... Very cool. I have
always preferred Gizmo over Skype because they use open standards.

~~~
byoung2
I'm interested to see the merging of Google Talk and Google Voice. The one
missing piece of the puzzle was the SIP infrastructure so you could dial out
from Google Voice without using standard phone lines.

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Frazzydee
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.

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coryrc
#2 was recently fixed (at least for me)

My problem is the gizmo5 client uses way more processing power than skype,
enough that it doesn't work on my atom laptop.

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run4yourlives
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.

~~~
numbchuckskills
not so fast...net neutrality (insert evil sound effect) will be the big
decider.

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mpk
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.

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toisanji
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.

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jasonlbaptiste
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>)

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timdorr
Yeah, a lot of acquisition news today (EA bought Playfish today too). This is
all very good news!

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pkulak
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.

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Xichekolas
_use a combination of Gizmo5 and Google Voice to get a free phone line_

Well, you could talk for free anyway. Not long after Google Voice started
handing out accounts they changed the requirements so you _had to have_ a
traditional 10-digit phone number registered with the account.

I was excited by Google Voice and Gizmo because I wanted to ditch my cell
phone all together (I use about 75 minutes a month). Once they added that
requirement though, I couldn't.

~~~
malbiniak
I was in the same boat, but managed to get around it by verifying a friends a
physical line (cell), leaving it in my account, but disabling it from
receiving future calls.

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

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fcu_1
should've been:

"Google acquires Gizmo5; Skype seeks fresh underwear"

