[asterisk-biz] Google's voice product [OT]

[SIP]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html?_r=1

The Pogue article is, as to be expected, gushingly lavish with Google 
praise.

Which leads me to a question:  how is this envisioned in the world of 
consumer VoIP (is anyone even still IN that business) ?  The article 
mentions that the entire service, single number, VoIP calling, 
transcription services, etc. will be completely free and ad-free. Where, 
then, is the business plan?

As we've noticed in our several years of being in business, consumer 
VoIP users are, for a lack of a better term, fickle. While 
facilities-based VoIP has a certain amount of customer retention simply 
because it targets home installations, the rest of the consumer VoSP 
world seems to see a rather high turnaround of users. It's still 
reasonably newer tech, and those who have the knowledge to put it to 
good use treat it, rightly, as a commodity. As long as the service is 
tolerable and the price is good, they'll jump ship from one VoSP to 
another faster than you can send a SIP REGISTER packet.

With this in mind, it seems that cost comes first and foremost, and 
service quality second. People jump for cost, but they will stick around 
an extra five seconds for quality of service, simply because the other 
players out there become an unknown. 

But here is Google, pushing VoIP tech (which will almost certainly 
integrate into their Google Talk services) to the consumer with all the 
trimmings of GrandCentral, plus some of Google's characteristically 
flashy, but likely very beta or late alpha services -- all for free.

With its constant marketing steamroller, and its massive brand 
recognition, I don't see, honestly, how 95% of the non-facilities-based 
consumer voice products out there will stand up to it.

But how long will it be the way it is now -- free of charge for basic 
services and ad-free? Is this a first salvo to slaughter the competition 
as cleanly as possible before the shift in business models? I don't see 
how even Google could sustain a product of this complexity and sheer 
cost without SOME method of making that cost back, and if common models 
of free to pay business marketing have taught us anything, it's that you 
can't build a sustainable business model around a service which is 
primarily free except for a few bits and pieces that might cost if 
people bother to use them.

Ideas? Comments? Snide remarks?

N.