Grand Central acquisition shows Google’s hand.
After all the attention that Grand Central has received, the rumour on the street is that they may have been acquired by Google for a cool $50 million. If true, it reveals a lot more of Google's hand than we've seen previously. Until now, they've studiously avoided any knd of service which connects them directly with the PSTN. GoogleTalk famously relies on third parties to provide origination and termination services. With Grand Central in the mix, however, that would no longer be true. Grand Central's message of One Phone Number, for life also fits nicely with Google's aspirations to be your one mailbox, and online identity resource.
June 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am
[...] nicely with Google’s aspirations to be your one mailbox, and online identity resource,” writes Alec Saunders. Though, I think, this would be Google’s attempt to add more oomph to the Google Apps, [...]
June 25th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I hope this is true. As a GC user from Day 1, I view this as a great step forward. I rely on my GC for work nd personal and they have been rock solid.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:08 am
[...] and GrandCentral in 2007, Dodgeball in 2005, and releasing Google Talk in 2005, it looked as if the company was readying plans to be a dominant real-time communications utility. As of yesterday, however, it seems those plans may be being shelved as Jaiku and Dodgeball [...]