AllThingsD » Google Voice

Google Voice Founder Tackles Conference Calls

Liz Gannes — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:05:01 +0000

Uberconference debuts today as a new interface for conference calls — you know, those terrifically annoying occurrences that people in business deal with on a daily basis.

What’s notable about the product is it comes from Craig Walker, the founder and CEO of GrandCentral, which became Google Voice. Walker was also formerly CEO of Dialpad, which became Yahoo Voice.

The Uberconference interface doesn’t require PINs, as individual participants automatically authenticate when they dial in from their own phone numbers. Each participant can see a visual dashboard that shows who is speaking at any time, and can click on each person’s face to get a personal backgrounder based on public social media info.

One neat feature: You know how conference calls are frequently interrupted from background noise coming from one of the callers, but nobody knows who’s the culprit? Uberconference makes it simple for the conference organizer to identify and mute that person.

Uberconference is free, though users who sign up won’t necessarily get access immediately. It’s on the Web and in the U.S. at first, with iPhone and iPad apps coming. Premium services will include local dial-ins, outbound calls and larger conference groups, Walker said today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City.

It’s made by Firespotter Labs, which is Walker’s Google Ventures-funded incubator.

Here’s a funny video Firespotter made about the current state of conference calls:

Larry Page Might Be Bill Gates+, But He Wants to Be Steve Jobs

Kara Swisher — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:12:09 +0000

Let’s face it: Everyone in Silicon Valley — one way or another — fashions themselves as the next Steve Jobs.

And why not? Both the professional and even personal story of the legendary Apple CEO — which will be chronicled in November in a major book — are the stuff of tech legend and envy: Iconic, in charge, decisive, elegant, innovative, phoenix-like and visionary.

And, of course, more than just a little bit terrifying.

So why not Larry Page, too, and why not now?

One issue: By temperament and action — by which I mean genetically hyper-competitive and hammer-time aggressive — he’s been more like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who has been the Yin to Jobs’ Yang in their deeply interconnected careers over the last decades.

As I wrote before Page took over again as Google’s CEO earlier this year:

After our first interview in 2001, my notes on the encounter had this one line underlined and in all caps:

LARRY PAGE=BILL GATES.

It was not meant as an insult, but I can tell you I never wrote such a note about Page’s co-founder, the jokey and affable Sergey Brin.

Even then, Gates had a fearsome reputation as a manically competitive exec, a cutting manner to those not as smart as he clearly is and a reputation as a very tough and often eviscerating boss. (And all that was also my experience whenever I was interviewing him.)

While much wonkier, friendlier and more of a sensitive new-aged male, Page, it seemed to me, had the exact same obvious drive and aggression as Gates.

The latest incarnation of that has been Page’s move — bold for now and we’ll-see later — to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, which Google announced yesterday.

By all accounts, Page was the key driver of the deal inside Google, where he now reigns firmly.

Although neither Gates nor Jobs has used acquisitions much as a key weapon in their arsenals, the size and scope of the deal is pure Gates: A focused, overwhelming and competitor-scaring display of might that speaks of industry dominance and play-to-destroy aspirations, masking what is also very reactive.

If Page’s doubling down on mobile reminds you a bit of Gates’s “Internet Tidal Wave” memorandum in 1995, that’s because the move-now tone is the same.

And, also, in that it is more than just a little bit sneaky. Case in point: Google’s yammering on about the importance of Motorola’s patents in the deal. While the patent love is true and an important element, bolstering Google’s own weak portfolio, it’s also a bit of a feint by the search giant, which can simply never come out and say what it is actually up to.

Which is to be the dominant and overwhelming player in the mobile market that Google sees as critical to its future.

“The company obviously wants everyone to focus on the patents, but its ambitions are so much larger in mobile,” said one person close to the situation. “So it underplays as it overplays.”

Indeed, in the time I covered Google, it has always been my experience when the search giant insists stringently on one thing, Page and others are playing a more complex version of “Star Trek” three-dimensional chess.

As the New York Times’ DealBook noted correctly:

If there’s any question about Google’s motivation to own a handset maker rather than just a portfolio of patents, consider this: InterDigital, a licensing company that owns some 8,000 wireless patents and has another 10,000 patent applications being processed, has been up for auction. Many industry insiders were sure that if Google were serious about acquiring a portfolio of patents, InterDigital would be its target. The company’s market value is only about $3 billion and it doesn’t come with all the baggage of Motorola’s handset business.

That’s exactly right, because Page’s ambition is about Google playing a big part in the mobile market — which is humanity’s next critical platform in computing — for its interlocked ecosystem of Google products — from its flagship search to social networking via Google+ to Gmail to its latest Google Wallet initiative to Google Maps to Google Voice.

In other words, it’s a Google world and we all just live in it.

At the heart of it is a desire to make and completely control the object at the center of the virtuous circle: The mobile device, whether it be a smartphone, tablet or whatever doodad you might wear around your neck.

In fact, as I also remember from Google’s earliest days, Page did sport a lot of such contraptions back then, such as a communicator of some sort he once joyfully showed off to me that allowed him to reach Brin quickly. Later, it was a kind of pollution sensor that took its place.

My recollection from that time was that Page adored such objects, visibly inspired by the idea of digital devices that delivered a myriad of helpful and smart services to users as they moved around the world.

You know, like an Apple iPhone, the ground-breaking technical achievement that Jobs rendered unto the world less than a decade ago, changing everything.

With Android and Page’s firm backing, Google quickly and smartly jumped partway into that market with its powerful and fast-growing mobile operating system.

Now, like Jobs, I have no doubt Page wants to own and control the whole value chain to solidify what Google started several years ago and which is its best hope to vault into the next era of computing.

It’s a leap that Gates and Microsoft largely failed at, not for lack of trying — something else Page has to have taken note of.

So, perhaps by making things — maybe even beautiful things like Jobs — Page will transform himself from a Gates into a Jobs.

Or, more likely, a little bit of both.

Until that reckoning, here is a terrific video of Spock playing 3D chess with Captain James T. Kirk — and, yes, he does look freakishly like Page here:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Smart Entrepreneurs Still Think What's Needed Is Help Figuring Out What Food to Order

Liz Gannes — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:27:44 +0000

Craig Walker’s new mobile application company Firespotter Labs is out with its first launch: Nosh, an app for iPhone and Android that helps users figure out what to eat at restaurants.

It seems like a bit of a small play for Walker, the co-founder of GrandCentral, which became Google Voice. While millions of people already use mobile apps like Yelp to figure out where to eat, start-up founders especially seem to think there’s room for improvement.

For instance, we recently covered Chewsy, which, like Nosh and Foodspotting, focuses specifically on dishes. And I just talked to a soon-to-launch company that promises its snazzy recommendation algorithm will help personalize the restaurant-choosing experience.

The advantages of Nosh, meanwhile, are that it comes pre-loaded with over 150,000 menus and 10 million menu items, and also that it’s at least trying to have a sense of humor, as displayed in this launch video:

GrandCentral's Craig Walker Raises $3M for Firespotter Labs

Liz Gannes — Thu, 05 May 2011 04:00:26 +0000

GrandCentral (aka Google Voice) co-founder Craig Walker has emerged from being an entrepreneur in residence at Google Ventures to start working on a specific project. Well, make that projects, plural: Walker is today launching a company called Firespotter Labs that will develop various companies, three of them at the start.

Walker wouldn’t specify what exactly he’s working on except to say it’s likely to be communications, consumer and mobile products.

Google Ventures, which is hosting Firespotter at its on-campus incubator, has already ponied up $3 million in Series A funding. Though Google Ventures is not the same thing as Google proper, it’s a bit of a coup for the company to hang onto one of its acquired entrepreneurs, rather than having him turn elsewhere for his next project.

Sprint, Google Embrace: Google Voice, Nexus 4G Coming To Carrier

Peter Kafka — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:07:04 +0000

Get ready for a slew of mobile deals beyond the AT&T/T-Mobile linkup, all timed to this week’s CTIA conference. For instance: Sprint is offering Google Voice for all of its mobile customers; Sprint says the integration will be finished “soon”. The two companies have also announced that Sprint will be offering Samsung’s Nexus 4G, the “first pure Google phone” running the Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” operating system. You can find Ina Fried’s comprehensive CTIA coverage here.

TellFi Helps Small Businesses Sound Professional on the Phone

Liz Gannes — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:48:10 +0000

TellFi launched today a simple Web-based virtual phone system for small businesses. The company helps freelancers and independent shops give off an aura of professionalism with functions like automated extensions and voicemail that would usually require installation by an IT person.

TellFi co-founder Conor Lee pitched NetworkEffect, “Just like individuals, small businesses are ditching landlines too. They have an expectation and need for professional-sounding phone systems.” And meanwhile, traditionally complex and regulated telephony systems are becoming more like cloud services, making them ripe for start-up-style innovation. Lee added, “Telephony is searching for a future where it’s not dumb pipes.”

TellFi is simple by design: it allows users to set up voicemail, call forwarding and extensions. It’s quite similar to the Web-based Google Voice, which is free, but the service costs $10-70 month and promises the customer support and call quality that Google doesn’t guarantee.

TellFi joined the Y Combinator accelerator program two months ago. It is already up and running with 50 companies, mostly other Y Combinator start-ups and real estate agents.

As it developed, the company had entertained thoughts of enabling polling services, and had also built out more complicated features like call scheduling, but it now has a more narrow focus. TellFi has raised funding from Yuri Milner and SV Angel’s Start Fund.

IBM "Jeopardy" Challenge Day One Ends in a Tie

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:55:05 +0000

Day one of the three-day battle between the human brain and silicon on the game show “Jeopardy” ended in a tie.

The IBM supercomputer and human player, Brad Rutter, each had $5,000 on the scoreboard, while Ken Jennings, who had bested Watson in the much-publicized practice match, ended with $2,000.

Watson missed some questions and in interesting ways. At one point Watson repeated a wrong answer, the “1920s,” which Jennings had just said. Host Alex Trebeck referred to these as “weird little moments.”

Watson sprang to a huge lead early. By the first commercial break, Watson had $5,200 to Rutter’s $1,000, and $200 for Jennings. It began a serious run interestingly enough after hitting the Daily Double and making a bet. This is interesting in that Watson, in the practice match which it ultimately lost, showed a weakness in situations where betting was called for. This was a weakness that Jennings exploited to his benefit. This made it a surprise when Watson threw down and bet $1,000, more than it had on the board at the time.

I asked Stephen Baker (pictured), author of the forthcoming book on the match, “Final Jeopardy,” to call me after the episode aired for a little color commentary from the point of view of someone who was in the studio to witness it. Our conversation, which I recorded on Google Voice, is below.

Steve Baker Talks about The IBM Jeopardy Challenge, Day 1 by ahess247

Google Ventures Sows Seed Funding With New Start-Up Lab (Video Tour)

Liz Gannes — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:00:02 +0000

As incoming CEO Larry Page seeks to recapture Google’s entrepreneurial spirit, Google Ventures thinks it’s in for a year of expansion and support from its corporate parent.

The VC arm, which gets $100 million from Google each year to invest as it sees fit, wants to give more early-stage companies seed funding, and to that end has taken over an enormous Google-owned building in Mountain View, Calif., and started filling it with companies. The space is mostly empty; there are just about 20 people working there now.

Google Ventures Partner David Krane took us on a tour of the Startup Lab, which opened in October and is currently occupied by start-ups like LawPivot (legal Q&A) and OpenCandy (software discovery), a product group from the vacation rental roll-up company HomeAway, and the yet-to-be-launched company of GrandCentral (now Google Voice) founder Craig Walker (which Google Ventures hasn’t invested in yet, though it’s made Walker an entrepreneur in residence).

The companies each pay $5 per month for as much space as they need, filled with recycled furniture from AdMob. They get a ping-pong table, free bikes and a microkitchen filled with snacks, courtesy of Google. They also added their own barbecue for the universal getting-to-know-you activity of grilling meat.

“This is not to be thought of as any sort of curated environment,” Krane said, anticipating the are-you-copying-Y-Combinator question. “This is merely work space.”

Krane said he mostly leaves the companies at the Startup Lab alone, stopping by about once a week. Google Ventures occupies its own floor of a building over on the other side of campus, right below Google’s autonomous car team, and also has offices in New York City, Cambridge, Mass., and Seattle.

Google Ventures has made about 30 total investments to date, with one exit: Ngmoco to DeNA. Just last week, it closed its first deal with a company led by former Google employees, the Web security provider Dasient.

It’s kind of crazy that a two-year-old venture firm with a staff of about 20 former Google employees wouldn’t have stumbled into investing in a former Googler’s company before now. And this is at a time when Google is fighting a talent war against its own employees’ entrepreneurial urges, which often lead them to join younger companies or start their own.

Krane said to expect more deals with former Googlers as Google Ventures “will do substantially more than 30 deals” this year.

“We don’t advocate or want people to leave Google,” Google Ventures Partner Bill Maris said, “but if someone has the entrepreneurial bug at that exit interview…”

[ See post to watch video ]

Google Deal for SayNow to Make Google Voice More Interesting

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:02:50 +0000

I’ve been a Google Voice user since before it was even called Google Voice. Back in 2007, I was fascinated by the potential of GrandCentral–the service Google acquired and transformed into Google Voice.

For one thing, once I gave out my new number to a handful of friends, I had this one goofy friend for whom I recorded a custom greeting. Every time he would call, I’d let it go to voicemail and he’d start every message laughing at some silly in-joke I’d leave for him in the greeting. Okay, I grant you not many people would go to the trouble to do that, but if you knew this guy, you just might. Update: A few readers pointed out in the comments that this feature is re-enabled in Google Voice, and they’re correct though it’s not exactly easy to find.

Ever since GrandCentral became Google Voice, it’s been a lot less fun to use. That custom-greeting feature is gone, as are some of the funnier Web calling buttons that GrandCentral had offered. Maybe that’s one of the reasons behind today’s acquisition by Google of SayNow.

Details are scant about what Google has in mind, but a source close to the deal tells us that the intent on Google’s part is to make Google Voice “even better in a world of Skype and Facetime,” which implies that the next step for Google Voice is some form of video calling.

SayNow made a name for itself by giving celebrities like Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers (remember them?) and the cast of “Glee” a phone number for fans to call and hear the occasional message. And at the start of the football season, ESPN used it to send the message embedded below from former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka to some 1.6 million fans on Facebook. Another feature gave celebs a way to hold live conference calls that fans could dial in and listen to. The biggest SayNow client was the rapper Soulja Boy, who racked up 50 million calls totaling some 100 million minutes of call time. If nothing else, Google can learn from the team at SayNow how to promote the service and get people interested in using it.

SayNow also has a serious side, an enterprise application called Big Call, aimed at making conference calls for businesses easy. The company says it was built by an intern in a week.

The deal for SayNow comes on the same day that Google made its long-awaited number-porting feature official, suggesting that Google Voice is going to be the focus of a lot more time and attention in the coming months.

Ditka’s season-opening greeting for Facebook users is below.

Google's Latest Assault on Carriers: Number Porting Comes to Google Voice

Ina Fried — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:52:15 +0000

Google confirmed on Tuesday that it will start allowing people to bring over their phone number to Google Voice.

The service, known as number porting, costs $20 and takes about 24 hours to do, Google said in a blog post.

“One of the most frequent requests we hear from people who use (or want to use) Google Voice is that they’d like to get all of Google Voice’s features without having to give up their long-time phone numbers,” the company said. “This means you can make the mobile number you’ve always used your Google Voice number, so it can ring any phone you want–or even your computer.”

Like email addresses, phone numbers tend to be a point of stickiness with consumers, tying them to a particular provider. That changed in the mobile world some years back, though, once carriers started allowing customers to move their numbers from one provider to another.

For them, though, that was sort of a zero sum game. They’d get some new customers and lose some old ones. This, on the other hand, makes it easy to leave the traditional system entirely.

Number porting is initially available only in the U.S. to existing Google Voice users. New customers in the States should be able to start bringing over their numbers in the next couple of weeks, Google said.

Once available only by invitation, Google Voice has been available for all since last June.

Free Gmail Calling Is the New Landline

Liz Gannes — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:21:41 +0000

One of every four American homes has only wireless telephones, according to the National Health Interview Survey. Personally, having only the very occasional need for a fax machine, I too am one of those mobile cord cutters.

But the thing is, I need to actually converse with people when I make phone calls, and that’s often impossible using AT&T in San Francisco. The majority of mobile calls made from my apartment on my cellphone are dropped or inaudible. So you might say I should regret that decision to drop the landline when I moved earlier this year.

But because of free Gmail voice calling (which launched last August), I’m doing okay. My home Internet service (also provided by AT&T, I should say) is mostly reliable, so I just dial out of my Web browser using my laptop’s built-in speakers and microphone. The calls almost always connect and sound fine.

Google announced today that this free calling from the U.S. to anywhere in the States and Canada would be extended through all of 2011 (back in August, it said it wouldn’t charge for those calls “for at least the rest of the year”).

Since I have a Google Voice account (which isn’t required to make calls), I can also receive calls in Gmail. When I dial out, my calls look like they’re coming from my Google Voice number.

I wouldn’t mind having a cellphone that actually worked for voice calls, but for now this will continue to be my backup.

No VoIP Calls on Google Voice for iPad and iPod Touch

John Paczkowski — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:57:48 +0000

Google Voice now supports iOS devices without cell service. Released today, the updated version of the app supports the iPad and iPod touch, but only to a point. While it allows iPad and iPod touch owners to send and receive text messages or check voicemail from their Google Voice accounts, it won’t allow them to make VoIP calls. That said, it can be used to initiate calls on true phones associated with a Google Voice account, if you ever feel compelled to add another step to the phone call process.

Google Apps Adds More Than 60 New Programs

Beth Callaghan — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:13:06 +0000

In a move that smacks oddly (for Google, anyway) of consolidation, the company is finally making almost all of its normal Google account services available within the Google Apps suite as well. That includes AdWords, Google Voice, YouTube, News, Blogger and more than 60 other applications, all available under one Google Apps login. The feature sets aren’t directly analogous, but Microsoft’s Office 365 might have sparked a little competition.

Google Voice Officially Comes to the iPhone

Beth Callaghan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:25:43 +0000

Today, after a wait of 16 months, the official Google Voice app for the iPhone is available in the the App Store. Google originally submitted the app last year, but Apple felt it was too much like the iPhone’s own calling system, so it wasn’t approved until recently. The app requires iOS 3.1 and a Google Voice account.

Exclusive: Facebook and Skype Readying Deep Integration Partnership

Kara Swisher — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:34:10 +0000

You didn’t think Facebook would integrate with Google (GOOG) Voice, did you?

Actually, according to sources close to the situation, Facebook and Skype are poised to announce a significant and wide-ranging partnership that will include integration of SMS, voice chat and Facebook Connect.

The move by the pair–which have tested small contact importer integrations before–is a natural one for the social networking giant, which is aiming to be the central communications and messaging platform for its users, across a range of media.

Facebook’s goal, according to sources: To mesh communications and community more tightly together and add more tools to allow users to do so.

Since it was not going to create an Internet telephony service of its own–kind of like not creating a mobile operating system–Facebook has apparently turned to the Web’s Internet telephony leader.

Interestingly, Facebook has previously tested a video chat product.

Skype had 124 million people using it at least once a month and 560 million registered users, which will be bolstered by the 500 million Facebook users who will now be able to use it more seamlessly within Skype.

That will include allowing users to SMS and call Facebook friends from Skype, which will now deploy Facebook Connect.

And also do video chat using Facebook in Skype, which you can see below, in a very odd screenshot sent to me by a source–Walt Mossberg’s code name is not Daniel Matthews and I am not Allison Brown. (Click on the image to make it larger.)

This all will be available in Skype’s newest version, 5.0, which emerges from beta in a few weeks.

This is a big win for the Luxembourg-based Skype, which is currently readying a public offering.

While it now dominates the online calling space, it needs to be present where users are now moving, such as Facebook.

And for Facebook, this is also helpful to its international push, making it more appealing globally since Skype is much more popular outside the U.S.

It will be interesting to see if both cross-integrate into their popular mobile apps too.

Facebook has been doing a lot of integrations with other communications services, such as a massive upcoming one with Yahoo (YHOO) and also one with Microsoft (MSFT).

Skype is also increasing its partnerships. Today, for example, it will announce a deal with Avaya, which makes office phones and related software aimed at businesses.

The pair called it a “strategic unified communications and collaboration partnership,” and is centered on business and personal videoconferencing.

GV Mobile and Google Voice Headed Back to iPhone?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:04:13 +0000

Looks like Google Voice may be headed back to the iPhone. In a tweet a few moments ago, Google Voice Mobile developer Sean Kovacs said he’s submitted–or rather, resubmitted–his Google (GOOG) Voice application to Apple (AAPL) for review following the company’s relaxation of its developer rules. In a follow-up Tweet, he said he expected the app to be approved within a week.

[Image credits: Sean Kovacs]

PREVIOUSLY

Apple: Contrary to Reports, Our Pants Are Not on Fire

Google to Apple: You Lie

Who Rejected Google Voice for iPhone? AT&T: Not Us. Google: REDACTED. Apple: We’re “Studying” It, Not Rejecting It.

AT&T Does Not Manage or Approve Apps for the App Store (Though We May Bitch About the Ones We Dislike)

[Image credit: Sean Kovacs]

Liveblog: Google Adds Voice Calling to Gmail

John Paczkowski — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:27:30 +0000

Google announced today it was adding VoIP calling to Gmail for U.S. users. Desktop calls to any phone in the U.S. and Canada will be free at least until the end of the year, and international calls will be billed at rates as low as two cents a minute.

Here’s the liveblog of the announcement:

9:36 am: The event kicks off with Todd Jackson, group manager for Gmail, presiding. He offers a quick overview of the product’s origins and its evolution–the addition of Google Talk and Google Voice. “When you can see and hear the people you’re talking to, it really changes the way you communicate,” he says.

9:36 am: Jackson calls up Vincent Paquet, product manager for Google Voice. He offers yet another overview of the product and Google’s hopes for it. “We wanted to improve the voicemail experience,” he says. “So we took what we learned from Gmail–that people want a lot of storage and an easy way to search and share their messages–and added it to the product.”

9:38 am: Paquet continues, noting the company then evolved the product into a mobile app. More touting of Google Voice features.

9:39 am: To date, Gmail and Google Voice haven’t been able to communicate with one another, but that’s about to change. With that, Paquet calls Craig Walker, product manager for real-time communications, to the stage. And he announces the big news of the day: The ability to make phone calls from Gmail. (Hey Skype! How’s that IPO registration going?)

9:41 am: Walker runs through a usage scenario, noting that if you have a good Internet connection in your home, you no longer need great cell coverage to make a call.

9:43 am: Walker pulls up his Gmail account, pulls up a Googley-looking HTML keypad and calls his travel agent via his Gmail contacts list. He does this without a headset, and the call quality and clarity is surprisingly good.

9:44 am: Interesting. The keypad displays a flag to indicate the country being called. It also displays the rate. With Paquet’s help, Walker calls a hotel in Paris. The rate: two cents a minute. Walker notes that the average rate for such a call is typically well over a dollar a minute.

9:46 am: Well, would you look at that. Walker’s just gotten a voicemail from his travel agent. As he checks it, his travel agent calls him back. She’s not happy that he’s seeking a Paris hotel without her help and begins a little tirade. Walker promptly demonstrates the mute feature and talks for a bit about how he could, if he wanted, pass the call from his computer to his phone.

9:48 am: Missed the details, but evidently, there’s a handy caller ID feature as well.

9:50 am: On to pricing. “We looked at the typical cell phone plan and it just seemed way too high to us,” says Walker. He adds that the same is true of VoIP services. Google’s solution: zero cents a minute for calls in the U.S. and Canada, and two cents a minute for calls to landlines in France, Spain and a host of other countries.

9:51 am: Interesting. Google’s designed some European-style Google phone booths and plans to put them in airports, college campuses, etc.

9:53 am: Walker says, “We’re going to give everyone 10 cents call credit to try the service out.” Afterward, they can buy additional credits through the app.

9:54 am: The rollout of voice calling from GMail to users in the U.S. begins today. No word on countries beyond that, but presumably an international rollout will follow.

9:56 am: Some discussion of Google Talk (chat), Google Voice and Gmail converging into a unified application.

Will there be a soft client? Doesn’t sound like it. Walker says Google prefers to focus its efforts on established Google products. “We don’t want to create another destination for phones; we prefer to keep the ones we have.”

9:58 am: Will credits expire? If you don’t use them, yes–but likely only after a year or so. Pretty standard.

9:59 am: Walker: “We have absolutely no plans to charge for calls in the U.S. or Canada….Our hope is that we’ll make enough margin on international calls to support our low rates.”

10:01 am: Credits will initially be available in $10 blocks.

10:02 am: Any plans for enterprise deployment? No comment, though Paquet seems to suggest this feature is headed for Google Apps someday. “It’s a consumer-level feature only at this point.”

10:04 am: Audio ads? No plans for that, says Walker. Again he notes the margins on international rates and how Google hopes they will be enough to sustain the model it’s described today.

10:05 am: More questions about the product’s future in business.

Paquet: “I think this product requires additional features before it’s ready for enterprise. It’s really just a consumer-level product right now.”

10:06 am: Ah. Google is committing to free calls in the U.S. and Canada through the end of the year. Walker says the company has no plans to raise rates after that, but clearly it’s reserving the right to do so.

10:09 am: Inevitable question about the Apple/Google Voice flap.

Walker dodges, offers nothing.

10:16 am: A few more miscellaneous questions about rates and whatnot and the session wraps up.

Google Voice No Longer Invitation-Only

John Paczkowski — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:47:20 +0000

Google Voice is now open to the public. At 10 am PT this morning, the company ended its invitation-only policy for the Web-based phone management service, making it available to anyone in the United States.

Here's Hoping Google "Speech-to-Speech" Translation Not as Hilariously Inaccurate as Google Voice Translation

John Paczkowski — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:43:02 +0000

Google has built up quite a business scanning the written word for contextual advertising opportunities. Now it hopes to do the same for the spoken word as well. The company is reportedly developing a real-time translation technology for our phones.

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” Franz Och, Google’s (GOOG) head of translation services, told the New York Times. “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on.”

A worthy goal, and admirable too, since such a technology, were it to work well, would really herald an end to language barriers. That said, given the hilarious inaccuracy of Google Voice’s visual voicemail transcriptions, I’d say a truly usable speech-to-speech translation service is quite a bit further off than Och claims.

Netflix CEO: iPad, iPhone Streaming Not a Priority

John Paczkowski — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:53:02 +0000

While unveiling the iPad this past Wednesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted it as “the best device” for watching mobile video. And that may well prove to be the case–but not for mobile video from Netflix, because at this point, the DVD-by-mail pioneer has no plans to bring its subscription-based streaming service to the iPad, or to the iPhone, for that matter.

Interesting, considering that the percentage of Netflix (NFLX) subscribers who streamed more than 15 minutes of video in Q4 2009 was 48 percent, compared with 28 percent for the same period in 2008.

Asked about the possibility of making Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” content available on Apple’s (AAPL) mobile devices during the company’s earnings call Wednesday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings seemed surprisingly indifferent to the idea.

“We haven’t yet done or submitted an iPhone application,” Hastings said. “We are optimistic that post the Google Voice brouhaha it would be approved. There is really no way of knowing in advance what Apple’s stance would be on that. Of course, that application if it works on the iPhone it would work on the iPad.”

Hastings added, “It is not a huge priority for us because we are so focused on the larger screen. Until we get our TV ubiquity and our Blu-ray ubiquity and we are getting close on video game ubiquity we would next turn to the small screen. It is just not a primary movie watching [device]. It is something we will get around to but it is not in the near-term.”

Here are video highlights of Hastings’s conversation with MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka at our interview event in Las Vegas earlier this month:

[ See post to watch video ]

AT&T, Google: Nuns on the Run

John Paczkowski — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:00:17 +0000

In the rhetorical battle over net neutrality, Google may have regulatory capitalism with which to bludgeon and batter AT&T, but AT&T (T) has Benedictine nuns, an entire convent of them.

In a 13-page letter to the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday, the carrier again said that Google should play by the same rules as its telecom competitors. AT&T also took issue with the search giant’s claim that Google Voice restricts calls to certain rural areas to avoid the so-called traffic pumpers that route calls there to drive up charges.

“Contrary to the public pronouncements of Google and its allies, Google’s rural call blocking regime is not limited to Google simply blocking calls to ‘adult sex chat lines’ and ‘free’ conference calling services to avoid high access charges,” wrote AT&T’s senior vice president, Bob Quinn, in the letter to the FCC’s wireline bureau. “In fact, Google is blocking calls to, among others, an ambulance service, church, bank, law firm, automobile dealer, day spa, orchard, health clinic, tax preparation service, community center, eye doctor, tribal community college, school, residential consumers, a convent of Benedictine nuns, and the campaign office of a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

My God. Google, the company whose business philosophy proudly proclaims “you can make money without doing evil,” blocking calls to small businesses? To Benedictine nuns? Don’t be evil?

Don’t be evil, my ass.

“We can now see the power of Internet-based applications providers to act as gatekeepers who can threaten the ‘free and open’ Internet,” Quinn continues. “Google’s double standard for ‘openness’–where Google does what it wants while other providers are subject to Commission regulations–is plainly inconsistent with the goal of preserving a ‘free and open’ Internet ecosystem.”

That established, Quinn goes in for the kill, arguing that the FCC should regulate the search giant not just on the wires, but on the Web as well.

“Google’s call blocking begs an even more important question that the Commission must consider as it evaluates whether to adopt rules regarding Internet openness,” he writes. “If the Commission is going to be a ‘smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet,’ then shouldn’t its ‘beat’ necessarily cover the entire Internet neighborhood, including Google? Indeed, if the Commission cannot stop Google from blocking disfavored telephone calls as Google contends, then how could the Commission ever stop Google from also blocking disfavored websites from appearing in the results of its search engine; or prohibit Google from blocking access to applications that compete with its own email, text messaging, cloud computing and other services; or otherwise prevent Google from abusing the gatekeeper control it wields over the Internet?”

An interesting question. And one for which Google (GOOG) is presumably already preparing a long-winded answer. This is far from over yet, and we’ll continue to go round and round until the FCC puts a stop to it.

AT&T, Google: Nuns on the Run

John Paczkowski — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:00:17 +0000

In the rhetorical battle over net neutrality, Google may have regulatory capitalism with which to bludgeon and batter AT&T, but AT&T (T) has Benedictine nuns, an entire convent of them.

My God. Google, the company whose business philosophy proudly proclaims “you can make money without doing evil,” blocking calls to small businesses? To Benedictine nuns? Don’t be evil?

Don’t be evil, my ass.

That established, Quinn goes in for the kill, arguing that the FCC should regulate the search giant not just on the wires, but on the Web as well.

Weekend Update: 10.10.09–The Textplosion Edition

Drake Martinet — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:35:48 +0000

Sometimes life’s irony smacks you in the face. Sometimes BoomTown smacks you with it instead. Early in the week, Kara logged a post that had a healthy dose of tech sector history. While Bill Gates may get a bad rap for “borrowing” from Woz and Jobs in the early days of Microsoft (MSFT), all the Apple (APPL) tablet fanboys, and fangirls, to be fair, should at least give him a tip of their hipstery hats. For Bill Gates, Kara reminded us, was the original tablet evangelist. After reminiscing about the halcyon days of Gates, Kara caught up with Adam Bosworth. The former head of Google Health just launched Keas, a health-care site that offers personalized “care plans” and a set of tools to help users keep healthy. BoomTown dug into real-time search late in the week and came up with a story about Twitter’s recent talks with both Microsoft and Google (GOOG), the latest signal that Twitter intends to remain an independent player on the Web.

Digital Daily never disappoints in the headline department and OMFG, this week was no exception. John pulled some juicy nuggets out of CTIA’s semiannual wireless survey, including the staggering figure of 4.1 billion— the number of text messages Americans exchange each day. Google Voice was among the top stories again, thanks to a group of House members who asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the service. Digital Daily rounded out he week with comments from Qualcomm (QCOM) CEO Paul Jacobs and the cacophony that is the net neutrality debate. With a dazzling turn of phrase, Jacobs supported the idea of “traffic shaping”, or giving network managers the keys to their net-neutrality handcuffs.

Three time zones away at MediaMemo, Peter didn’t seem sure whether it was a sadder week for music sales or for music in general. Music sales are still in a slump. What may be worse, however, is that the slump was only slowed by Michael Jackson and The Beatles, neither of whom seems like a pillar for viable growth. Amid music’s slump, there may be a ray of hope in videoland. MediaMemo reported that Network TV-buster YouTube seems to be learning how to play nice with the other kids, offering certain content producers a way to channel some revenue back into their own coffers. The momentary bright spot for media quickly evaporated when it came time to talk about print. Peter followed the story of Condé Nast’s multiple magazine closings. It’s always a sad day when there are fewer beautifully composed pictures of cookies in the world.

Rounding out the week, Walt released his anticipated review of Windows 7, and proclaimed it good enough to help you get rid of that lingering Vista hangover. With installation times averaging about 45 minutes and lots of neat new features, Windows 7 may just be good enough to make you feel like having a party. Mossberg’s Mailbox was peppered with several Windows 7 RSVPs. Walt issued his usual sage advice about switching to Windows 7, as well as a quickie about personal finance software. The Mossberg Solution covered a set of new point-and-shoot cameras, each with a striking party piece. Katie reviewed the Samsung Dualview TL225, which features a second screen on the front of the camera for convenient self portraits, and the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj, which features an actual projector right inside the camera. Both cameras earned praise for ingenuity, with the caveat that those new features come with an extra price tag.

Check back early and often. There’s always room for AllThingsD.

FCC Google Voice Probe: Ask, AT&T, and It Shall Be Given Unto You

John Paczkowski — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:27:07 +0000

Well, look at that: Google’s Google Voice service has inspired another Federal Communications Commission probe. Days after a group of House members, echoing a call first made by AT&T (T) in September, asked the FCC to investigate Google Voice, the Commission obliged, sending a letter of inquiry to the company.

“Recent reports indicate that Google’s Google Voice service restricts calling from consumers to certain rural communities,” the FCC wrote. “We are interested in gathering facts that can provide a more complete understanding of this situation.”

Though Google (GOOG) has until Oct. 28 to file a formal response, the search giant was quick to thump the tub in its defense on its Public Policy Blog. There, Rick Whitt, the company’s telecom and media counsel, argued again that Google Voice is not a traditional phone service and should not be regulated like one.

“Google Voice is not intended to be a replacement for traditional phone service–in fact, you need an existing land or wireless line in order to use it. Importantly, users are still able to make outbound calls on any other phone device,” Whitt wrote. “…AT&T apparently now wants web applications–from Skype to Google Voice–to be treated the same way as traditional phone services. Their approach is what a former FCC chairman has called ‘regulatory capitalism,’ the practice of using regulation to block or slow down innovation. And despite AT&T’s lobbying efforts, this issue has nothing to do with network neutrality or rural America. This is about outdated carrier compensation rules that are fundamentally broken and in need of repair by the FCC.”

FCC Google Voice Probe: Ask, AT&T, and It Shall Be Given Unto You

John Paczkowski — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:27:07 +0000

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AT&T, Google: Nuns on the Run

AT&T, Google: Nuns on the Run

Weekend Update: 10.10.09–The Textplosion Edition

FCC Google Voice Probe: Ask, AT&T, and It Shall Be Given Unto You

FCC Google Voice Probe: Ask, AT&T, and It Shall Be Given Unto You