Google Telecom is on the verge of being born with the giant’s rumored acquisition of GrandCentral expected to be confirmed in one or two days according to Michael Arrington of Techcrunch.
Update: As I am finishing this post, Google has just confirmed the acquisition of GrandCentral.
What positions Google superbly in this sector is:
That’s a huge advantage marketing-wise. Google has enormous mind share and an extended honeymoon period which gives it a significant business edge.
1. Google acquired a bunch of dark fiber and thus could manage and optimize its own high-bandwidth Internet infrastructure, an alternate Google Web that would enable it to cut down on costs.
2. Google has built and dispatched a staggering number of huge Google data centers around the US. As you may have read in my post on The essence of Google’s success, each of these data centers is powered by a highly-optimized cluster of low-cost PCs running Linux in a fast network, and with customized device drivers for high-speed hard-disk i/o.
Google Talk allows Voice over IP and Internet messaging. More recently, a Google Gadget for Google Talk has been available. Thus, Google Talk capabilities can be integrated into the iGoogle page so that a user from any OS can use it through the browser.
Already, Google Talk allows the integration of Voice Messages into GMail (up to 10 minutes of recorded voice messages in mp3 format), and also file sharing.
Future enhancements include the support for the SIP protocol for VOIP.
GMail already integrates the messaging part of Google Talk so that you can chat with your peers, but more integration of your data within Google apps and services could potentially be achieved. For instance, one can imagine the automatic recognition of event data within Google Talk messages (text or audio) to be added to Google Calendar.
GMail already does this for text with Google Calendar, but the integration of Google Talk VOIP and messaging into Calendaring will bring about much business value in event sharing and invitation as well as resource reservation and general scheduling.
Example of GMail and Google Calendar integration:
I have sent myself an email with the details of the ‘party’ in the subject line.
Within the “More actions” combo box, I select Create New Event. The Google Calendar event details form is automatically populated with the correct information. Note that even the date of this Friday is correctly abstracted. Amazing, isn’t it? 
On adding the event, since I have two-way synchronization between Google Calendar and Thunderbird and Lightning, the event appears in both!
Moreover, you could imagine sharing all your files within Google Docs and Spreadsheets with your friends and business contacts from within Google. The new interface for Google Docs and Spreadsheets has a folder-view which allows easy file management within the browser.
The potential for collaborative work within this integrated Google infrastructure is amazing for several reasons. One, is the fact that Google is reliable and fast so that you don’t have to manage the actual infrastructure, but remember also that Google gives you a lot of space online and has the best search capabilities.
It would be interesting to know where the Jotspot wiki technology is heading and how it could also be used with the above-mentioned Google technologies as a collaborative tool.
With all the above and the freshly announced Google Gadget Ventures which will reward developers for the most successful Google Gadgets, it is obvious that Google has on its hands an extremely powerful collaborative developer platform.
Besides, this allows external developers to freely extend Google’s software capabilities using open-source tools.
GrandCentral provides you with one phone number linked to all your existing phone numbers, and many other features (thanks to Techcrunch for this great overview) through its website and also through your mobile.
There have been rumors of the Google phone before, and such a device with the mobile Google applications, linked to all the Google integrated goodies mentioned above would be pure bliss for managing and sharing data and event information with contacts when either online or offline thanks to Google Gears.
To fuel these Telco ambitions, Google has all the money it needs. Its stock has now risen above $500 and this trend shown no sign of abating. Google has the money especially because of its inroad in highly-targeted advertising which brings the bulk of the revenues and profits.
Here is what I predict will happen with Google Telecom. Based on the current state of Telecom, i.e. VOIP disrupting the industry with the old Telcos still charging too much while there are cheaper VOIP offers like the Gizmo Project, Skype, VBuzzer and Jajah, Google will adopt a similar strategy to Google Apps. With Google Apps, Google has a tiered access: free access for users and paid access for businesses.
I believe Google Telecom will offer free calls locally and worldwide to fixed telephone lines and mobiles to individual users and basic paid access for businesses and bring a more severe disruption of the Telecom industry as it will rely on getting more advertising through these channels. Alternately, Google could use the Google Web infrastructure to position itself as an ISP and offer free Internet access to all too.
That’s a killer strategy, and they can pull it off. Beautifully at that.
Peter Nowak from the Financial Post probably has the best article about this.
