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Voice - Monday, July 2, 2007

Google Buys GrandCentral

Voice technology is a nice spot to be in. Google has just bought GrandCentral after the startup raised just one round of funding and never got out of beta. We don't know how much Google paid at this point for Grandcentral but surely it was not as much as MIcrosoft paid for another voice company Tellme $800M or the amount that Nuance paid for VoiceSignal $293M. Given these great paydays it is surprising that we don't see more startup and funding activity in the voice area.

As a recap, San Francisco based GrandCentral was funded by Halsey Minor's venture firm. As Google puts it: "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, based on who's calling. This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job. The service also gives you one central voice mailbox. You can listen to your voicemails online or from any phone, forward them to anybody, add the caller to your address book, block a caller as spam, and a lot more."

This should be a nice deal for all involved. GrandCentral gives Google a well regard product and team and it can promote GrandCentral like hell to get into people's phone networks.
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