Web giant Google said it will buy a Norwegian firm for $68.2 million for cash. It doesn't expect anti-competition authorities to object.
Global IP Solutions (GIPS) specialises in creating voice and video processing products over IP (internet protocol). Its customers include Nortel, Oracle, Samsung, Yahoo, Webex, AOL and other voice over IP companies.
The transaction is being made by Google Acquisition Holdings Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of the search behemoth. Rian Liebenberg, Google's engineering director, said that the GIPS technology provides hgih quality, real time audio and video over IP networks, and real time audio and video communication over the internet are "important new tools".
The price Google is paying is 142.1 percent over the closing price of GIPS shares on January 11th, 2010.
Google said it's unlikely that competition authorities anywhere will object to the deal.
Google will get rid of existing GIPS customers as soon as support agreements will allow, and practically (quality of support) even long time before that.
The current and potential customers of GIPS are in trouble – as Google is competing with them (Yahoo, Baidu, AOL, etc), or just has no interest to serve them for smaller customers.
So customers are hopeless? No.
Time for #2 on the market to come on the stage.
SPIRIT DSP has been successfully competing with GIPS over all these years.
SPIRIT kicked GIPS away from Skype, who created most of GIPS market attractiveness
SPIRIT has been listed among the Top 10 VoIP leaders by FierceVoIP (GIPS was not).
Today SPIRIT offers its VVoIP platform on a variety of desktop and mobile platforms supporting not only Google’s Android but iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile (it’s not true that GIPS was the only or even the first to allow Voice&Video on Android).
SPIRIT has at least the same or better products.
SPIRIT offers a 1000-channel capacity video server, which is the ahead-of-GIPS technology development.
So existing and potential customers of GIPS - service providers, application developers, and telcos that are deploying voice and video communication services – now consider SPIRIT as the #1 choice for Voice&Video Engines and Voice&Video Conferencing Servers.