Google has Quietly Moved into the Phone Services Business

As I read and wrote a simple comment to a post on Amplify by fellow Amper Dan Minor ( http://danjminor.amplify.com/2010/11/13/3244/ )  about his sharing of an article on Google's new two-step authentication ( http://tcrn.ch/cb7bb8 ) when it sudden occurred to me just how much Google is getting into telephones and telephone services.

They have Google Voice and have added it to run along with Gmail making an integrated Google answer to services like Skype.

They provide information and phone number look up with their Google 411 service.

They've developed the Android OS for mobile phones and even played with their own mobile phone offering. (Which even with it's failure to succeed can't be really called a failure as Android phones are everywhere anyway).

Now they announce Google phone authentication to provide greater account security with it coming in all flavors. Test message, iPhone app, iPad app, Android app, and who knows what else since it's new.

Plus they are rumored to be adding Google Voice to the new Android OS Gingerbread so it can work both with Android phones and the new Pad Android computers coming out soon without needing an app.

That leaves only what would be a simple integration with their paid online business level apps and email service for them to be offering a simple set of business phone services tied directly to their software and available on everything from a computer to your mobile phone and even your a land line if you still have one,

So what we see is a picture coming together of Google being on all platforms and offering everything from phone service to phone services. And most of them are currently free so certain to continue to grow and spread. That means that without a lot of fanfare they have staked out a place in the phone and phone services market. And unlike the true telephone companies are so far unregulated as everything is VoIP and they have no fees or requirements to share anything beyond the phone connections that already need anyway.

It might get interesting over the next few years as Google pushes the phone providers, both mobile and land line, into responding to a move into their territory.

So can Google continue to add phone services while the existing providers look the other way? Or will the providers begin to fight back and block Android OS devices or put pressure on Google to try and stop Google Voice from being made an integral part of the Android OS? (That of course wouldn't stop an app from providing it anyway.)

Time will tell!

But I'll bet Google has the intent of tying all of this together and being for all practical purposes a total communication provider for everything from email and on line applications to phone and phone services. Seems like Google has made an end run around everybody and will be offering such a complete package of total services no one is going to be able to fight them off.

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/f854