Android, Google and Gizmo… The story just keeps getting better

I saw this announce­ment this morn­ing — so I haven’t had a lot of time to think about this yet. First the article:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/11/12/google-paid-30m-for-gizmo5-did-the-search-giant-just-blow-up-t/

Some knee jerk reac­tions (both Pro and Con)

Pro

1. The acqui­si­tion just makes sense — with all the effort Google has put into Google Voice and the Android plat­form, this is a log­i­cal extension.
2. At some point, the abil­ity to make Wi-Fi calls may become a prob­lem for the car­ri­ers. If I can make local calls over Wi-Fi (see the con sec­tion below) — I see this as a prob­lem for the voice car­ri­ers, but I guess the “insur­ance” for them is that the “unlim­ited” data  plans are usu­ally capped at around 5 GB a month — I am not sure how much usage band­width voice takes.

Con’s

1. For the most part, I still think it’s hard to com­pletely replace a home line. Even with a plan that has rollover min­utes — what hap­pens if you make a lot of local calls dur­ing busi­ness hours? I haven’t done the math, but I still think you get a bet­ter value hav­ing von­age for the $30 (includ­ing taxes)
2. There is some­thing to be said for hav­ing a Von­age account and using one of the wire­less phone sys­tems that include 4 or 5 hand­sets. One ben­e­fit is that you should always have a phone charged and ready to go, assum­ing of course your fam­ily puts them back into the holder. With a mobile phone, at some point you need to con­nect it to a power cord.

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Tags: Android, phone, smartphone, Technology

Category: Commentary, Telephones