Skype vs. Google Voice

Here is what Google Voice claims to be able to do when it is released... together with my responses.

1. "Get a single phone number that routes calls to your cell, work and home phones simultaneously." 

With Skype, you can have a PSTN number that rings in Skype, and if you don't answer it then it forwards directly to whatever other number I want such as my cell number (I can change it easily). 

2. "Call numbers in the U.S. for free. And call internationally for ridiculously low rates -- I'm talking 2 cents a minute to China."

Skypeout rates are very competitive.   While it's possible that Google rates will be lower in some cases especially while they are trying to attract call volume, it is not reasonable, given Skype's huge buying power and cost advantage with p2p architecture, to expect Google will maintain an overall price advantage for very long.

3. "Get your voicemail transcribed into e-mail or text messages."

While it is true that Skype does not do this cheap trick, it is certainly possible.  A third party might readily begin offering this service if Google proves there is a market for it (which I doubt).

4. "Make free conference calls."

Skype also offers free conference calls

5. "Get your voicemail on the Web."

Voicemail has already proven itself to be a service of  low value.   There is little reason to think it will be of higher value if you can retrieve it on the web rather than on the device where you receive calls.  Again, if Google were to prove there is some value to voicemeil on the web, then there is no reason why Skype or a 3rd party using Skype's API could not do the same. The VOIP industry tries to package "features" like this in what it often calls "Web 2.0 Messaging Services", but it rarely amounts to more than cheap tricks.

In addition to these 5 now hopefully disproven reasons*...

http://www.skype-gadgets.com/webtown/2009/03/if-google-succeeds-with-their-google-voice-then-skype-is-half-dead-call-your-voice-mail-on-google-voice-get-transferr.html, ; let's look at some other facts:

a.  Skype has its own set of cheap tricks.  Some are included.  Some come with special pricing packages.  Some come from 3rd parties.  Suffice it to say that Skype's feature list is long when you consider the entire ecosystem, and it's growing quickly thanks to a quality API, efforts to put Skype on every platform and graft outside ecosystems into its own.

b.  Skype's core features go well beyond what anybody else has; voice, video, chat, file sharing, SMS and PSTN interconnection, and conferencing.

c.  The quality of Skype's core features exceeds the comparable competition (if any) by wide margins.  Notably, Skype's voice and video quality is plainly superior, and its privacy features are incomparable.

At the end of 2008, IP visionaries admitted that "VOIP is dead".  http://ckipe.posterous.com/how-depressed-are-voips-vision. ; Since then some have been backpedaling, trying to create the impression that all is well in VOIP land, posturing mighty ecosystems of IP communication that can destroy the mighty Skype.   One thing is for sure; it will take far more than Google Voice to accomplish that objective. 

Meanwhile, in the hour it's taken me to write this blog post, Skype has added, with zero acquisition cost, about 1300 new "real users" http://glimfeather.com/borderless (15 thousand new nominal users).   What's VOIP going to do about that?