VoIP swipe
Global IP Solutions (GIPS) is a company that specialises in voice and video over IP solutions. Among its customers are Yahoo and AOL, which use its technology to give voice and video functionality to their instant messaging services.
They'll presumably be somewhat alarmed by the news that Google has bid $68.2 million (it's actually listed on the Norwegian stock exchange) for the company, with the intention of strengthening its own, competing products such as Google Voice. This will also help Google to compete in the unified comms market against the likes of Cisco and Microsoft.
"The Web is evolving quickly as a development platform, and real-time video and audio communication over the Internet are becoming important new tools for users," said Rian Liebenberg, engineering director at Google. "GIPS's technology provides high quality, real-time audio and video over an IP network, and we're looking forward to working with the GIPS team at Google to continue innovating for the Web platform."
"This is an exciting milestone for GIPS as we join Google with a shared vision to transform and accelerate IP communications," said Emerick Woods, GIPS CEO. "With Google's global reach, scale and widely recognized leadership, we are confident that our existing customers will continue to be fully supported while we continue to enhance and extend our products and technology at Google."
Woods also published an open letter to GIPS customers on the website, in which he said: "Following the completion of the Offer, Google intends to continue servicing GIPS's customers in accordance with existing contracts while offering them the opportunity to transition to new offerings developed by Google." That's nice of it.
