The Times Online, that's THE LONDON TIMES, has more on the Google possible entry into VoIP. Google has called the report pure speculation.
Okay, so let's speculate. It's early and I've already had one double espresso at Starbucks....If you recall a few days ago I said Google should make an offer for Level3. It would give them all they need and more to do what they are apparently looking to do in the fiber space, plus give them incredible know how.
1. The portals of today on the web all want a larger part of the wallet.
2. A search engine is nothing but a big yellow pages, the directory that used to be the primary place people went to look for a phone number.
3. Speech enabled technology, blended with search, called Interactive Voice Response from companies like TellMe and Parus Interactive (formally Webley Systems) which holds a series of U.S. Patents on speech enabled telephony applications are in very strong positions to be the picks and shovels of this new technology advances that are on the rise as pal Tom Keating points out.
4. In the case of Parus Interactive, their Retail IVR solution could bring it all together for a Google, which already has Froogle as a product search engine, understands and uses XML in their architecture and wants to be the only place one goes for information of a commercial nature.
But even with the speculation of what's really going on a Google, a later report has Google standing mum on the subject. In looking over the job description summary, this could easily be for a video or streaming media post, and that's one that Google has been interviewing candidates for over a month or more based on some people I know they have talked with.