VoIP Now: Happy 3rd Birthday, Skype! And Google Does A Deal With eBay

August 29, 2006

Happy 3rd Birthday, Skype! And Google Does A Deal With eBay

Today is Skype's birthday, and the team had a nice gift in that over seven million users were logged on simultaneously, for the first time ever. They figure that this will become a common occurrence, and I'd have to agree. Especially considering the multi-year agreement that Google signed with eBay, Skype's parent company. Part of the agreement involves interoperability between Google Talk and Skype (yeah!), as well as "click-to-call" functionality. This means that commerce sites will be able to display a "call" button that, when clicked by a site visitor, will initiate a call to an eBay merchant or Google advertiser, using eitherSkype or Google Talk.

I think that this an incredible development. Especially considering that earlier this year, Google released their Google Checkout competitor to Paypal, which is also owned by eBay. The latter had blacklisted Google Checkout very recently. It's a good thing for consumers that they decided to kiss and make up, though Wall Street seems to be confused about the outcome. Watch for a new Google toolbar, out soon.

Google Talk has been lagging behind a lot of the VoIP capability that Skype has, but soft clients like Talqer has filled in some features. What makes me particularly happy, though, is that intercompability between IM clients seems to be progressing a lot more rapidly this year than I would have thought in January. (Note: Festoon's Unity software acts as a bridge to Google Talk and Skype.)

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August 29, 2006 in Google, Netmeeting, Skype | Permalink