Skype alternatives

Filed in archive Technology on September 4, 2005

Inspired by Teleo's trade sale to Microsoft I was curious to find out a bit more about teh new offspring of Skype competitors out there. It seems there is a new company every other week.

Project Gizmo a nicely looking toolset to make largely outbound calls from your PC. There is more about them here.

Jajah is another tool that interoperates with Skype but refused to work at my PC at least. There is more info about the tool here

Google has entered the game recently with Google Talk that combines Chat functionality with voice.


All in all I'm not really sure what the Fuzz is about. IM tools with voice funcationality have been there for a while. Yahoo and Microsoft messenger as well as ICQ were able to add voice (given there was no NAT between) for some 6 years now. Quality was not as good as Skype but quite usable.


Skype brough much better connectivity to the table plus used much improved third party software for voice transmission like Global IP Sound that seems to become a standard backbone for VOIP Tools.



I just wonder if all these companies are eyeing for an early exit - which is not unlikely as Teleo has shown - or if they are in the business for the long term. As net2phone has shown it can be extremly tricky to make a business of margins at outbound callings.



What do you think? What is the business model in the long term? Have I missed other promising competitors?