Google acquires Web-calling service GrandCentral |
| News created: 4. juli 2007 15:39 |
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Grand Central of Fremont, California is one of dozens of innovative companies that are taking advantage of Web-based software to allow consumers and businesses to make voice calls over the Internet while also working with regular phones.
GrandCentral was founded in late 2005 by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, who worked together while running Web-calling pioneer Dialpad Communications. Google's biggest rival, Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research), acquired Dialpad in June 2005.
"You get a single phone number that forwards to all of your phones, giving you one number for life," Walker and Paquet said in a statement on GrandCentral's Web site confirming the deal.
EBay Inc. (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) unit Skype, a pioneer in the Internet phone market, has signed up more than 200 million users for its free or low-cost phone services globally. Newer names in the field include venture-backed firms Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr and Rebtel, which together have signed up millions of users in just the past year.
The idea for GrandCentral was borne out of Walker's frustration upon landing at a local airport and realizing he needed to check three voicemail mail boxes -- one for his cell phone, another for work and one for his Blackberry phone.
"If you have multiple phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cell), you get one phone number that you can set to ring all, some, or none of your phones," Wesley Chan, a Google product manager, said in a blog post on his company's Web site.
40049 True 13 NULL 04-07-2007 15:40:59 YouTube visits larger than rivals combined: survey www.youtube.com SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - YouTube, which has had to pull copyrighted videos off its site after legal attacks by some big media franchises, has enjoyed a surge in U.S. audience share that leaves it far larger than the next 64 video-sharing sites combined, a survey found.
The U.S. market share of visits to YouTube, which Google Inc. bought for $1.65 billion last November, rose 70 percent from January through May, online audience measurement firm Hitwise Inc. said in the survey published on Wednesday.
By contrast, visits to the next 64 largest sites tracked by Hitwise rose only 8 percent during 2007's first five months.
"As of May 2007, YouTube's market share was 50 percent greater than those 64 sites combined," Hitwise research director LeeAnn Prescott said in a summary of her firm's data.
YouTube's share of the U.S. online video market was 60.2 percent in May, according to Hitwise. Its closest rival, News Corp.'s MySpace Videos site, had 16.08 percent of market share, the survey of Web surfing habits showed.
YouTube's sister site, Google Video, held 7.81 percent, while Yahoo Inc. had 2.77 percent and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, 2.09 percent, according to the study.
Start-up Metacafe ranked No. 8 in U.S. visitors to video sites with 1.07 percent, Time Warner's AOL Media had 0.94 percent and Veoh was No. 10 at 0.86 percent, Hitwise said.
Viacom Inc. filed a copyright infringement suit against YouTube in March seeking more than $1 billion in damages and demanded that YouTube take down thousands of segments from its popular programs, including The Daily Show with John Stewart, The Colbert Report and South Park.
A separate suit was filed in early May by plaintiffs including English soccer's Premier League. Both suits argue YouTube encourages massive copyright infringement to boost the site's traffic in the hopes of generating advertising sales. |
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