In Life and Internet Telephony, Timing is Everything

VocalTec will now become magicJack VocalTec Ltd. – a nod to the fact that most Americans see more magicJack ads than they do even McDonalds and name recognition for VocalTec is virtually zero – except for the handful of us in the VoIP space in the nineties.

The personal irony for me is that Microsoft NetMeeting was an Internet telephony software package which was given away for free by Redmond shortly after VocalTec announced a paid product. As a result, VocalTec had to refocus completely on hardware gateways and Microsoft became the leader in VoIP. They then abandoned development of NetMeeting and eventually Skype was launched and grew so large that Microsoft had to purchase them.

The announcement of the name change being made at the same month as Microsoft’s Skype acquisition strikes me as ironic and one wonders how Microsoft’s attempt to dominate IP communications will work out this time.