Google’s acquisition of Swedish-based Marratech, a video conferencing software company, should lead into Google Talk becoming more competitive with eBay’s Skype and other services.
Video May Come To Google Talk
Google Talk has been a relatively stripped down option for online communication, especially when comparing it to messaging products from Skype, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Now that the company has celebrated its first quarter earnings by announcing tremendous revenue growth (though profits were flat), they promptly made Marratech a beneficiary of their good fortune.
The purchase is being couched in terms of helping out Google’s internal workers videoconference from their desktops, wherever that desktop may be so long as a Net connection is available. Amit Agarwal noted how Marratech’s Java client works with Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
It could even be a competitor to WebEx, the web conferencing company networking giant Cisco recently purchased. Marratech’s capabilities include similar ones like hosting virtual meetings and sharing desktops with other participants.
“There’s a possibility that Google will integrate Marratech web conferencing features into Google Apps (Premier Edition) and Google Office to make these “virtual office” offerings more complete and compelling for the corporate world,” Agarwal said.
Those are certainly options for Google, as those products are oriented toward users similar to WebEx’s target market. Microsoft plays in these waters as well, just as it does with productivity suites that Google seems to be competing with despite Eric Schmidt’s claims otherwise.
Video has been a glaring omission from Google Talk, and we think Marratech’s technology, which includes video chat, could be adapted as an enhancement to Google’s IM product.
