John Naughton in today's Observer:
VoIP has all the characteristics of a profoundly disruptive technology - that is to say, one which threatens to undermine the business models of huge companies. And because its potential victims are telcos which have invested billions in specialised networks and infrastructure for carrying revenue-bearing voice and data communications, it potentially makes Napster look like a tea party. …
Nobody I know in the industry doubts that, in the long run, almost all telephony will be done via the net, simply because it's the obvious way to do it. The $64 billion questions are: how do we get there from the Skype/Gizmo chaos of today, and how long will it take? By throwing its hat into the VoIP ring, Google has signalled that a really big player has arrived on the scene - and that could indeed be significant in the long run. …
Since its inception, Google has stuck to three basic principles. The first was to build and maintain the most powerful computing cluster ever seen. The second was to employ smart engineers and marketers to figure out revenue-bearing services that could be provided with such a system. The world knows Google for search, but that merely happened to be the first application that came along. The third (and perhaps the most important) article of Google faith is that the internet will in the end become the world's operating system - the hub of everything (including telephony), with the web browser the dominant user interface.
