I'm not buying it. Even if Google did something like this, people would bolt. VoIP is cheap enough that most people wouldn't put up with it. They'd become "MySpace" to some else' "Facebook" in a heartbeat.
Google actually has a "less than stellar" track record when it comes to offering VAS to their ads and search. Look at Google+. For all intents and purposes, a far superior social media platform to Twitter or Facebook. But, nobody uses it - just the smart kids.
Most people have shown that they are willing to trade much of their privacy for a good free/cheap service. Google proves this with the hundreds of millions of people that use its products.
If Google feels that enough people will tolerate ads in their phone calls, then I am sure they will do it eventually. If you don't like what they are doing, don't use their products. It's a free market and there are lots of alternatives (especially in the voip market).
It may be hard to compete with free, but seeing this video really does not make me want to flock to Vestalink.
Edit: Also, I am uncomfortable relying on a small business for my voip needs whose owner has another unrelated side business. It makes me wonder what takes priority when the servers go down and they are out DJing a wedding...
The DJ business got be through College at UW. It might be a side business but it has got me to where I am today. You do have a point but the servers are not going to go down. They are in the cloud. Amazon.com would need to go down first.
Seems like a viral marketing attempt. Although I can see how this is threatening your business model and why you'd like to educate others about a company that once swore to "Don't be evil."
As for my answer to your question, I find VoIP so affordable that I would rather pay for it than listen to ads. The business model however would probably work. I bet Google could implement it and not lose too many customers. People would complain loudly for a while, but I suspect most would not actually leave.
Pudding Media, a start-up based in San Jose, Calif., is introducing an Internet phone service today that will be supported by advertising related to what people are talking about in their calls. The Web-based phone service is similar to Skypes online service consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers, dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media offers calling without any toll charges.
The trade-off is that Pudding Media is eavesdropping on phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to the conversation. Voice recognition software monitors the calls, selects ads based on what it hears and pushes the ads to the subscribers computer screen while he or she is still talking.
A conversation about movies, for example, will elicit movie reviews and ads for new films that the caller will see during the conversation. Pudding Media is working on a way to e-mail the ads and other content to the person on the other end of the call, or to show it on that persons cellphone screen....
The Proof was not in the Pudding: Pudding Media is Shutting Down
According to Calcalist,Pudding Media, an Israeli mobile advertising startup, faces imminent shut down. Pudding Media let go 25 employees this morning and announced it will cease its operations in Israel. The companys assets will be put on sale as the company only retained five employees for maintenance reasons.
Pudding Media was founded in 2006 by brothers Ariel and Ruben Maislos. Pudding managed to raise $10 million from BRM and Opus Capital, as well as investments from known Israeli angels including Eyal Waldman, Udi Weinstein, Yariv Gilat and Ariel Maislos himself, who previously sold Passave to PMC for $305 million in stock in 2006.
In its early days, the company offered free VOIP calls to landlines, with a plan to monetize those calls by contextually matching ads to the content of the conversation. For obvious privacy reasons, that path did not immediately succeed and Pudding took a radical turn towards mobile advertising focused on enabling and selling premium carrier-based inventory.
Oh, and another free service (ad-supported) was called [Brring!]
Brring was a free service allowing users to create phone numbers with embedded preroll advertising....
Brring acknowledged on its blog that it had received no income from advertising during the first 18 months of service, and that the founders had paid out all the reward money, in excess of $12,000....
Finally some discussion other than, VESTALINK SUCKS!!! hahaha This is really not a viral marketing attempt, it just interests me. Sounds like a great business idea actually, maybe there should be a Vestalink free edition that is Ad supported. Anyone want to help me build it? But Wait, its already patented by Google. ________________________
Hi PX Eliezer, thanks for the excellent input! But Google is not going to listen to your calls from what I understand from the patent. They will just utilize the dialed number to match relevant ads during the ring tones. Its similar to what cell phone company ringplus.net is already doing but with more targeting and sophistication. I'm sure its going to be interactive advertising with speech recognition.
First, what Google patented is not what they will implement. There are far more patents never got commercialized than patents granted. In other words, your video is hypothetical.
Second, I doubt Google will actually implement what they have patented in this case simply there are multiple choices available to consumer these days.
I for one, do not use Google Voice (Hangouts) on mobile phone. For outgoing calls, I use magicApp primarily, Vonage Mobile as secondarily. Both Dingaling and Hangouts are installed as backup. Incoming calls I use Voxox. I have fixed line phone outgoing calls is still using Google Voice, but I hardly ever use fixed line phone these days as mobile phone via Wi-Fi serves me better than cordless phone.
I feel we have already offer too much information to Google by using Android and Google search engine. Unless Google telephone service is the best fit for me, I would not use it. Generally, I try to use best fit product and/or service for me. Free or lowest cost is just one of major factors to be considered.
Pre-roll audio ads on the phone would make me instantly drop the service. I'd rather pay than have such obtrusive interruptions to my calls. I'm with nunya, VoIP is inexpensive enough already.
As for AWS uptime, they've had some massive outages and many lesser ones. At one company I worked at, after several such outages, all AWS services were promptly cancelled. Sometimes there's a little rain in the cloud.
i worry about cottage industry voip providers doing stuff like this because their profit margins are razor thin as it is. google has many streams of revenue and voice can easily be a loss leader. no loss leader when voip is your only source of revenue.
As a lower priced provider who does follow the rules and is very privacy oriented my perspective might be useful here.
I believe you are either the customer or the product and if your paying for the service your a customer.
If your a paying customer: I think it would be all kinds of unethical for a provider to even think about looking at the contents of a customer's conversation for ANY purpose that wasn't legally required including any marketing.
Secondly it's probably illegal see here: »www.fcc.gov/guides/prote ··· -records We are required to submit yearly compliance reports to the FCC on this
If your using a free service: Your the product not the customer, I don't think you have any expectation of privacy beyond whatever the privacy policy of that provider is at the time you place the call.