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Google to Acquire Sprint Nextel?

November 12, 2007

Rich Tehrani reported on Saturday that he's hearing rumors that Google may acquire Sprint Nextel. Techcrunch picked up Rich's story and provided their own analysis. Matthew Ingram also has an interesting take on Rich's rumor with an interesting line - "Google has effectively become the saviour of everything."

Why would an acquisition of a phone service provider (carrier) make sense? Well, for one, carriers sign exclusive deals with phone manufacturers, i.e.

Posted in Google, Wireless

Will the Real Google gPhone Please Stand up!

November 1, 2007

Will the real Google Phone, gPhone, or whatever the heck it's going to be called please stand up? Enough of the hype and enough of the teasing. I can't take it any more. The latest tease comes from The India Street, which writes, "we've just confirmed a tip from an industry insider that China's e28 is going to be Google's Gphone software and handset manufacturer.

Posted in Google, TMCnet, VoIP

Google Phone Mania

October 31, 2007

There is so much hype and hysteria surrounding the Google Phone that I can't keep up with all the various rumors and speculative articles. There's so much to read and so little time. Fortunately, I have a "proxy" to filter through the noise. Rich has a deep interest in the Google Phone so he's been reading up on all the various articles and making brief summaries of what the experts say the Google Phone will and won't be.

Posted in Google, Mobile Phones, News, TMCnet, Technology and Science, Wireless

Google Promotes Blogs and Videos

September 5, 2007

Google has been integrating video clips into the search results, but now it appears they've added another option to quickly search for videos or blogs with that keyword in mind. I was doing a search on "multi-touch" when I noticed a blue toolbar area on top that had two clickable links - Blogs and Video. Before if you wanted to search the blogs, you had to click the 'more' drop-down box and then choose Blogs - a bit tedious.

Below is a screenshot of Google's home page with my search on 'multi-touch'. I drew red circles and put red text for the important parts.

Posted in Google

Google buys Grand Central?

June 25, 2007

According to an unconfirmed report on TechCrunch Grand Central may have been acquired by Google. Grand Central is a great application that gives you a single phone number identity and has some cool functionality, such as the ability to move a Skype call to a mobile phone without hanging up. Personally, I wish Google would improve their Google Talk application's feature-set which still lags far behind Skype and other VoIP applications. Integrating Grand Central into Google Talk would certainly compliment the feature-set.

So does this unconfirmed report mean Jangl, Jajah, Jaxtr, Talkplus, or Truphone are ripe for acquisition? The mobile VoIP space seems to be heating up!

Posted in Google, VoIP

fring coming to Windows Mobile phones

June 19, 2007

Some big news from fring, a popular free mobile VoIP software. fring will soon announce support for Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 devices. Currently, Fring only works on Nokia phones which use the Symbian operating system. What, no iPhone support?

Posted in Google, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, VoIP, Wireless

Google Acquires Feedburner

June 1, 2007

Google has just acquired Feedburner. Financial terms of the acquisition were not immediately available, however rumor has it that it's north of $100 million.

Feedburner blog was quick to point to this FAQ link which includes some "reassurance" about user privacy. Specifically it says, "Google has a long-standing commitment to protecting the privacy of users' personal information. FeedBurner users can expect the same high standards of privacy protection following this acquisition. We believe that notice and choice are the foundations of privacy.

Posted in Google

Google Blog Search Doesn't Suck?

May 25, 2007

After bashing Google Blog Search (saying it sucks) just 3 days ago, a Google engineer came across my blog article and emailed me. He stated that Google corrected a bug with their back-end and that TMCNet's blogs were back in Google Blog Search. Kudos to Google for not only responding so quickly but for proactively contacting me since I had difficulty reaching Google.

The funny thing is that he emailed my old email address (tkeating @ tmcnet . com) which should have bounced back to him as System Undeliverable.

Posted in Google

Google Blog Search Sucks

May 22, 2007

Google Blog Search sucks and here's why. First, it is cluttered with spammy MFA (Made for Adsense) blogs that often aggregate (steal) content from legitimate blogs. I used to use Google Blog Search to see who was linking to my blog and to track any interesting blog conversations. Now, if I want to track any blog conversations I stick with Technorati.com and Techmeme.com.

Posted in Google, TMCnet

Google Talk to offer PSTN phone calls?

May 19, 2007

A Google Apps multimedia training presentation shows Google Talk with "Show dialpad" in the user interface on Slide 9. It also says "Enter a name or phone number." Currently, Google Talk only lets you dial other Google Talk users, and the Gizmo Project - it doesn't support PSTN dialing, though there are some third-party add-ons that enable PSTN dialing from Google Talk, such as GTalk2VoIP. However, GTalk2VoIP uses their own termination network not one from Google.

So looking at this screenshot taken from an official Google page, can SIP-to-PSTN calling from Google Talk be far behind? How bout free PSTN calling?

Posted in Google, TMCnet, VoIP

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