Google News, Inside.

Google is the move again. With a surprise acquisition on July 4th, 2007, the rumor came true that Google has indeed acquired GrandCentral VoIP.

Google has been making some serious acquisitions lately in a larger effort. Google has some serious plans in mind for all these acquisitions. But does it align with their over-arching mission statement?

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

So lets analyze this mission statement and this acquisition. Voice over Internet Protocol phone service, how will this help move Google forward?

This acquisition is something I can actually see as very beneficial for everyone, including Google.

If you look back at older models of VoIP, you can see Cisco as really the first company to be in the market with their VoIP phones and Microsoft Exchange integration. Having the capability to leave a voicemail and then listen to it in your e-mail inbox is really the first part of integration that was seen.

Looking forward now, with this acquisition of GrandCentral, I can clearly see the direction that Google is going — clearly in the sense of my outside perspective.

But before explaining that, lets take a look at what Google’s actually been doing lately.

• Google Gmail (initial e-mail service start-up)
• Google Talk (gtalk)
• Google Docs (spreadsheets & word processor)

This looks a lot like what Cisco and Microsoft have already been doing, but now Google is taking just one step further.

Google now has the capability to seamlessly integrate e-mail, both on a consumer and corporate production level, Google’s own communication protocol through Google Talk, and a soon-coming online office suite. Seamless integration between these three products will probably prove to be deadly to any remotely-interested competition to the corporate online service market.

Google, collecting (and owning) all of this information — as described in their mission statement, very clearly — will be able to offer any kind of service to any kind of business, no matter how small or how big the company or organization.

This new combination of services will keep Google ahead of the ball game in most all industries related to the Internet now.