Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–17 of 17 posts

Re: Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

#11

Post by malbiniak »

Xichekolas wrote: post #8
pkulak wrote: post #5

This is pretty awesome. Even before the acquisition you could use a combination of Gizmo5 and Google Voice to get a free phone line, but this could make everything even more seamless.

use a combination of Gizmo5 and Google Voice to get a free phone line Well, you could talk for free anyway. Not long after Google Voice started handing out accounts they changed the requirements so you had to have a traditional 10-digit phone number registered with the account. I was excited by Google Voice and Gizmo because I wanted to ditch my cell phone all together (I use about 75 minutes a month). Once they adde…

I was in the same boat, but managed to get around it by verifying a friends a physical line (cell), leaving it in my account, but disabling it from receiving future calls.

Re: Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

#13

Post by wtallis »

Xichekolas wrote: post #8
pkulak wrote: post #5

This is pretty awesome. Even before the acquisition you could use a combination of Gizmo5 and Google Voice to get a free phone line, but this could make everything even more seamless.

use a combination of Gizmo5 and Google Voice to get a free phone line Well, you could talk for free anyway. Not long after Google Voice started handing out accounts they changed the requirements so you had to have a traditional 10-digit phone number registered with the account. I was excited by Google Voice and Gizmo because I wanted to ditch my cell phone all together (I use about 75 minutes a month). Once they adde…

I had my home number linked to my account, but then a third person in the household got a GV number and linked it to our home phone. This caused my account to drop my landline as a forwarding number, but it still works fine with the Gizmo number.

Re: Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

#15

Post by mpk »

Anybody have information on the details of the acquisition?

How many shares did that 6 million investment buy? Is the 30m buying price all cash or are there stocks/shares involved? Will Gizmo5 keep its current management? Are there incentives for key personnel to stay in place?

X buys Y is fairly superficial information here.

Re: Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

#16

Post by Frazzydee »

I hope that Google's takeover will improve the quality of Gizmo5 and bring in a strong competitor to Skype.

I tried to replace Skype with Gizmo5, but two major problems made me go back to Skype:

1) Voice quality on the receiver's side is awful, and the caller's side is too quiet.

This may be partly due to my connection– I was using wifi– but Skype worked without issues. I'm not sure whether this is because of the underlying technology, or because of the PSTN link quality.

2) Payments take a couple days to process, whereas Skype payments process in seconds.

That being said, Gizmo5's pricing is markedly better, which is what prompted me to try it out in the first place.

I think Google is definitely capable of fixing the second problem quickly and effectively. And Google's reputation for excellence gives me hope that the overall quality of Gizmo5 will also improve accordingly.

Re: Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

#17

Post by coryrc »

Frazzydee wrote: post #16

I hope that Google's takeover will improve the quality of Gizmo5 and bring in a strong competitor to Skype. I tried to replace Skype with Gizmo5, but two major problems made me go back to Skype: 1) Voice quality on the receiver's side is awful, and the caller's side is too quiet. This may be partly due to my connection– I was using wifi– but Skype worked without issues. I'm not sure whether this is because of the und…

#2 was recently fixed (at least for me)

My problem is the gizmo5 client uses way more processing power than skype, enough that it doesn't work on my atom laptop.

Post reply on HN