Google announced today that it has made a cash offer to acquire Global IP Solutions (GIPS).
A leader in the real-time VoIP processing space for both voice and video, GIPS doesn’t have any consumer-facing products; instead, it provides services that work on the backend for products like Yahoo! Messenger, Citrix and WebEx.
This is an interesting acquisition for Google, who already has a number of consumer products that could benefit from GIPS technologies. Not only does GIPS provide voice processing for VoIP calls that could potentially improve gTalk and Google Voice, GIPS also has a large focus on real-time video transmissions, both on the client and mobile side.
Our first thought when looking at this announcement was that Google could provide some really formidable competition to Skype.
In a statement to its customers, GIPS said that following the completion of the offer, Google intends to continue servicing existing GIPS customers in accordance with their contracts. At the completion of the contract, those customers will have the opportunity to transition to “new offerings developed by Google.”
That statement is equally interesting, as it positions Google to offer white label services to other companies. While Google does have some white label deals, most of what it does is more consumer or customer facing.
While the official announcement about this deal says that it is “not currently expected to require approval by competition authorities in any jurisdiction,” the fact that Google’s competitors, including Yahoo and Baidu, use GIPS technology in their respective messaging clients might mean otherwise.