http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html?_r=1
The Pogue article is, as to be expected, gushingly lavish with Google praise. Which leads me to a question: how is this envisioned in the world of consumer VoIP (is anyone even still IN that business) ? The article mentions that the entire service, single number, VoIP calling, transcription services, etc. will be completely free and ad-free. Where, then, is the business plan? As we've noticed in our several years of being in business, consumer VoIP users are, for a lack of a better term, fickle. While facilities-based VoIP has a certain amount of customer retention simply because it targets home installations, the rest of the consumer VoSP world seems to see a rather high turnaround of users. It's still reasonably newer tech, and those who have the knowledge to put it to good use treat it, rightly, as a commodity. As long as the service is tolerable and the price is good, they'll jump ship from one VoSP to another faster than you can send a SIP REGISTER packet. With this in mind, it seems that cost comes first and foremost, and service quality second. People jump for cost, but they will stick around an extra five seconds for quality of service, simply because the other players out there become an unknown. But here is Google, pushing VoIP tech (which will almost certainly integrate into their Google Talk services) to the consumer with all the trimmings of GrandCentral, plus some of Google's characteristically flashy, but likely very beta or late alpha services -- all for free. With its constant marketing steamroller, and its massive brand recognition, I don't see, honestly, how 95% of the non-facilities-based consumer voice products out there will stand up to it. But how long will it be the way it is now -- free of charge for basic services and ad-free? Is this a first salvo to slaughter the competition as cleanly as possible before the shift in business models? I don't see how even Google could sustain a product of this complexity and sheer cost without SOME method of making that cost back, and if common models of free to pay business marketing have taught us anything, it's that you can't build a sustainable business model around a service which is primarily free except for a few bits and pieces that might cost if people bother to use them. Ideas? Comments? Snide remarks? N. _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
