DomainTools Blog

It appears Google is duking it out with eBay on many fronts. Google Checkout vs eBay’s paypal and now Google Talk will take on eBay’s Skype for the right to be the worlds most used Internet Phone Software. We all know the secret sauce to Google Talk would be outbound calling. Skype took over a lot of market share in the US last year when they made Skype Free for the rest of 2006.

Could our mock-up to the left be what Google looks like in the future?

If Google enters the VoIP-to-Phone market, we expect them to lower their price to free as well. Microsoft is famous for entering a market and also lowering the price to free. Microsoft started by including free software with the OS,  but in recent years we have seen Google use the same strategy. Picasa, KeyHole, and other software that Google bought was the best of its kind and sold for a lot of money. Google bought these companies and shut down the revenue – giving the software away for free.

Members of the Google Blogoscoped forums found the image to the right along with some basic information on the new Google Talk application from an internal Google apps resources overview [which has now been taken down].

We have to question why Google isn’t protecting their Google trademark. Domain names like Free Google Phone.com has been taken since 2005. Does Google only fight for domain names after the product launches? Google Phone.com has been registered by someone else since 2002!

Google may be brillant at creating new services and taking market share, but they are doing a bad job at protecting their domain names. Google can duke it out with eBay and Microsoft, but they fail to fight cybesquatters.