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Google (Finally) Finds Its Voice

For people who spend a lot of time thinking about disruptive innovation, there are few companies more interesting to watch than Google. The many ad-supported online services it's been rolling out over the years have disrupted everything from libraries to snail mail to word processors, and the image it's acquired in the popular imagination as a sort of Anti-Microsoft--a young, nimble, innovative, un-evil kind of company--doesn't hurt either. Maybe now it's time to ask: What isn't Google disrupting out in Mountain View? Well, now that we've had some time to reflect on the mid-March release of Google Voice, it looks like one answer is phones.


First, some background. Back in 2007, Google ( GOOG - news - people ) acquired a small but fascinating company called GrandCentral for about $50 million, and it has reworked and expanded GrandCentral's innovative menu of features to create Google Voice. Although at the time there was some concern that GrandCentral would enter (and possibly never emerge from) what Slate's Farhad Manjoo called the "Google Black Hole," it's clear that Google has made a healthy investment creating a slick service with plenty of interesting features.

The new service, which should soon open its doors to new, non-GrandCentral users, assigns users a new, single phone number, and that number rings all of your phones at once. Google Voice offers some neat technological advances to help users manage phone calls: features available through the site include voicemail storage and computerized transcription, Gmail-like SMS storage (you can send SMS messages through the site as well), call blocking (it even plays a recording to tell persistent callers your number has been disconnected), conference calling, and the ability to place calls (although the calls are placed via your phone, so you won't save any minutes). In a nutshell, Google Voice makes managing your telephonic life a little easier.

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So what does it all mean? Google has indicated that Google Voice will be free for users (except international calls--more on those below) and won't include ads, so there is little doubt that it will attract a healthy user base, but I'm not sure how much of an impact the service will have, either for the market or for Google itself.

Big-Picture Market Implications
Internet-based telephony (VoIP) has been getting a great deal of attention in recent years, and leading services Skype and Vonage ( VG - news - people ) have certainly had more than their share of attention from the media and from other companies. (Skype was acquired by eBay ( EBAY - news - people ), of all companies, in 2005). Commentators have said that Google Voice could be threatening to both these companies and to more "traditional" telecoms, but four factors make me skeptical...

First, it's not clear that the VoIP industry is a particularly attractive industry to enter, or that incumbents are doing at all well. Since its "most successful IPO in years" in 2006, Vonage stock has done nothing but decline (from above $12 a share to less than 50 cents a share). Skype, on the other hand, is a fairly popular way to make free computer-to-computer video calls and has certainly done a fine job accumulating and pleasing users, but as a revenue generator for eBay it's been very disappointing, and persistent rumors of a sale have been floating around for more than a year.

Second, VoIP's woes aside, Google Voice's Internet-based calling features don't seem to be particularly attractive and seem designed to supplement, not replace, existing phones. Sure, you can initiate calls through the Web site, but unlike Skype, Google Voice routes those calls through your cellphone or land line, so you're still basically using your old phone company and won't save any minutes (although it's worth noting that international calls are quite cheap if begun through Google Voice). Unlike Vonage, Google Voice can't actually replace your phones; it just makes them easier to use.

Third, Google Voice's success will depend on consumers' willingness to adopt it--and the fact that Google is demanding consumers change their telephonic habits may impede that adoption. Google Voice would shift the experiences of checking voicemail, sending text messages, and even making calls from the phone itself to the computer, and unless consumers see a substantial benefit, they will not be motivated to make that change. On the other hand, many of us have demonstrated our willingness to make big changes to our communications habits (certainly, carrying phones around with us everywhere was a big change), so this obstacle may not be so problematic.

 

Microsoft said Tuesday it has opened a new research center in Switzerland to develop internet telephony software, also known as Voice-over-IP.

The U.S. tech giant said the center, located in Zurich, will grow from 45 to 200 staff over the next three years.

Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) said in a press release that the site complements three other centers developing communications software in Beijing, China; Hyderabad, India; and Redmond, Washington.

Google added voice recognition technology to the search software it distributes through Apple for its iPhone.

Gummi Hafsteinsson, Google Mobile Applications product manager, offered a demo of the application at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Hafsteinsson simply opened the Google Search application on his phone, held the phone up to his ear, and spoke.

The application combines voice-recognition technology with Google's search index and the iPhone's ability to track a user's location to offer results keyed to his or her whereabouts. "This is a completely open-ended query stream, so you can say anything," Hafsteinsson says. "Anything you might want to type into Google.com, you can say to this applciation."

The move helps plug a gaping hole in the iPhone's capabilities--voice recognition--while pitting Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) against Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), whose Tellme unit has long sought to bridge the gap between phones and the Web with voice recognition-enabled applications.

"Imitation is the best form of flattery, so welcome to the party," said Dariusz Paczuski, senior director of Tellme consumer services. Tellme's software allows those with BlackBerry's or Samsung's Instinct smart phone to search for information using the company's voice recognition technology. Microsoft acquired Tellme Networks in March 2007.

Expect more to come. Forrester principal analyst Charles Golvin has long argued that voice recognition, while largely ignored by application developers, will become a more common way to connect users with sophisticated data services going forward. "It's the interface that is, after all, the most widely used, the interface that people are most comfortable with," Golvin says. "It makes sense that this would come of age."

Tellme's Paczuski confirmed that his group is working on similar applications for the iPhone and smart phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.

The update to Google's search application for the iPhone, which Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) will release through its App Store software distribution service for the smart phone, will allow users to ask a question and get an answer from the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's search engine.

The results will also be linked to a user's location. So asking for coffee or pizza will direct users to a nearby location.

The application is one of a number of voice-friendly third-party applications for the iPhone that have helped close the gap between the iPhone and mobile phones that have long given users the ability to perform basic tasks, like dialing phone numbers, with voice commands.

While Google is best known for its Web search service, it has been pushing aggressively into telephony. In October, T-Mobile began selling the G1, a handset built around Google's smart phone software. In April of 2007, Google launched GOOG-411, a service that allows users to call an 800 number to get information by phone.

On Friday, Google shares fell $2.06, or 0.66%, to $310.02. Google shares are down more than 50% year-to-date.

(CNN) -- Bullets were pinging off our armor, all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPGs being fired, soaring through the air every which way and impacting all around us. All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions were going off. I've never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I'm going to die.

When U.S. Army machine gunner Colby Buzzell began blogging about his combat experiences from a military base in Mosul, Iraq, he wasn't looking for attention or trouble. Buzzell just wanted a way to chronicle what he saw and did and felt during the Iraq war.

But his visceral, first-hand accounts were a bracing antidote to dry news reports and bloodless Pentagon news releases. In the first major war of the Internet age, Buzzell and other soldier bloggers in Iraq offered readers around the world unfiltered, real-time glimpses of an ongoing conflict.

"Here's a soldier in a combat zone ... writing about it and posting it on the Internet. I don't think that's ever been done in previous wars," Buzzell said.

"It just provides another perspective that no embedded journalist can ever do," said the veteran, now a freelance writer in San Francisco, California, and the author of "My War: Killing Time in Iraq." "An embedded journalist is just there observing. But a soldier writing about it -- you can't get more embedded than that

A suburban skateboarder with punk-rock sensibilities, Buzzell had no background in creative writing before he joined the Army in 2002. Inspired by a Marine buddy and burned out by a string of dead-end jobs, he signed up after a smooth-talking recruiter offered a signing bonus and sold him on the Army "like it was some [expletive] Club Med vacation."

When Buzzell arrived in Iraq in November 2003, he didn't know what a blog was. But after he read an article about a blogger in Time magazine in June 2004, he began posting anonymous journal entries on the Web under the nickname CBFTW (Colby Buzzell F--- The War).

"The only writing I knew how to do was ... like I was telling a story to the person next to me," he said. "I'd go to the Internet cafe [at the Army base], and my ears would still be ringing from whatever the experience [was] that day. There were times when I couldn't type fast enough."

Over the next six weeks, Buzzell wrote brutally frank, profanity-laced posts about the terror, tedium and misadventures of an infantryman's life in Iraq. At first, few people seemed to notice. But word spread, and before long he was getting hundreds of e-mails a day from readers.

Parents of troops in Iraq wrote to thank him for helping them understand their children's wartime perspective. One reader said they found Buzzell's blog more informative than the war coverage in The New York Times. Buzzell even heard from a sympathetic Iraqi in Baghdad who prayed for his safe return to America.

But almost nobody -- not even Buzzell's wife -- knew that he was the blogger.

Then came August 4, 2004. Mosul erupted in gunfire, and Buzzell's platoon survived an ambush by swarms of black-clad insurgents wielding rocket-propelled grenades. Buzzell witnessed his platoon sergeant survive a bullet through his helmet and narrowly missed being killed himself.

The next day, Buzzell went online and found a few brief news reports of the firefight that killed at least 22 Iraqi insurgents and civilians. In his mind, the stories didn't begin to capture what happened. So he wrote a long blog post, titled "Men in Black," about the ambush.

I observed a man, dressed all in black with a terrorist beard, jump out all of sudden from the side of a building, he pointed his AK-47 barrel right at my f------ pupils, I froze and then a split second later, I saw the fire from his muzzle flash leaving the end of his barrel and brass shell casings exiting the side of his AK as he was shooting directly at me. I heard and felt the bullets whiz literally inches from my head.

The "Men in Black" post attracted media attention, and Buzzell was flooded with e-mails and interview requests from around the world. Based on his descriptions of the Mosul attacks, his commanding officers soon figured out that he was the blog's author.

The Army confined Buzzell to the base and began monitoring his posts. Then, after he posted an anti-Iraq war rant by Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, they ordered him to stop blogging.

Buzzell's Iraq blog lasted just 10 weeks, but it helped pave the way for others to follow. Today, according to the Army, thousands of active-duty soldiers write some form of online journal, often known as a military blog or "milblog."

Pentagon security policy forbids soldiers to publish sensitive information, such as unit locations or the timing of military operations, that might put troops in harm's way. But beyond that, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are encouraged to blog about military life, said Army Public Affairs Spc. Lindy Kyzer.

"We're actually entering an era of transparency, where we need to have our soldiers talk. It does open up risks. Once you post something, you can't get it back. But we trust our soldiers with a lot," she said. "They are our best spokespersons. They know what the life of a soldier is like, and it's important to convey that to the American people."

Blogging also helps soldiers process traumatic combat experiences that can be hard for them to talk about, Kyzer said.

Since leaving Iraq, Buzzell collected his wartime blog posts and journal entries into "My War," which was published in 2005. Excerpts from his Iraq blog also appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience."

The war cost Buzzell his marriage and left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis that helped him avoid being redeployed to Iraq last spring. Now 32, he contributes regular features to Esquire magazine and hopes to write another book, the contents of which he's not ready to discuss.

Buzzell is no fan of the Iraq conflict, although he's heartened that active-duty soldiers are still reading "My War."

"The book is being passed around over there, which is kind of surreal," he said. "I do get e-mails from soldiers over there. Guys will say, 'Thanks for getting our story out,' or 'Things haven't really changed that much since you were here.'

"Looking back now, I don't think we had any business [in Iraq]," said Buzzell, who wants to see President-elect Barack Obama end the war. "Hopefully, he gets us out of Iraq in a way that's not a disaster or that gets a lot of soldiers killed."