Google Moves to Buy Global IP Solutions for $68.2 Mln

May 18, 2010 By Geoff Duncan

Google is buying another company: this time it's VoIP and online video outfit Global IP Solutions with all cash offer of $68.2 million.

Internet giant Google is continuing its recently acquisition spree: this time it is making an all-cash offer of $68.2 million to acquire Global IP Solutions. The move is widely being seen as a way for Google to beef up VoIP and live video capabilities in its Android mobile platform. Last month, Global IP Solutions announced its VideoEngine for Android, offering IP-based voice and video calling capabilities. Last week, GIPs inked a deal with Motorola to build the technology into Motorola’s Android phones.

GIPS also has deals with Cisco as part of the company’s WebEx online video conferencing offering, and LG has inked a deal with GIPs to include VoiceEngine Mobile in its systems; GIPs technology is also inside AIM and Yahoo video conferencing systems.

The acquisition likely means that Google is eyeing building VoIP capabilities—and potentially video conferencing—directly into the Android platform as an asset that all application developers can leverage. However, the acquisition may also have major ramifications for Google Voice, especially when taken in context of Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5 late last year, which was the company’s first move towards making Google Voice a full-blown VoIP service capable of taking on Skype.

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Max Yashunin at 4:43am 3rd June 2010 Everybody in the industry says that Google wants to control the core VoIP technology. Its bid for GIPS makes much sense in this respect. But what it means for the customers of GIPS, and some of them, by the way, are in direct competition with Google. It’s not unlikely they will be left with
limited or no support at all. Google will use VoIP as a platform in its Android OS, Google Chrome and probably in its Google Apps. Google will need GIPS’ expertise and engineering resource to back its VoIP strategies. SPIRIT DSP which successfully competed with GIPS over all these years is now the only independent VoIP technology company on the market. SPIRIT dislodged GIPS from Skype and was named among the Top 10 VoIP leaders by FierceVoIP. Today SPIRIT offers its VVoIP platform on a
variety of desktop and mobile platforms, supporting not only Google’s Android but iPhone,Symbian, Windows Mobile. SPIRIT offers a video server with 1000-channel capacity. Now SPIRIT is the number one choice for service providers, application developers, and telcos that are
deploying voice and video communication services.