Fans Petition Google Over Skype-Killer

Google just launched its free phone management application Google Voice to the general public.

While that release is a Web-based program to let users route calls to home, work and mobile phones through a special number from Google, TechCrunch has tantalised users for months with the idea that the company is building a desktop client of the software.

Voice Over IP

Google last November acquired Gizmo5, the VOIP application that lets users make phone calls over the Web.

Gizmo5, which Google had used to enable users to connect calls from desktop to desktop and desktop to phone, is an alternative to the popular Skype VOIP service, which boasts almost 500 million users. In an interview with eWEEK about the broad availability of Google Voice, Google Voice Product Manager Vincent Paquet declined to say how Google was using the Gizmo5 assets it acquired.

“We designed Google Voice to be endpoint-agnostic and we certainly want it to be accessible from any type of endpoint, not just phones,” Paquet told eWEEK on 21 June. “The direction in which we are going to keep working is to use the Web, which is probably the best UI there is in the world, to give you more control and personalisation over your communications.”

However, TechCrunch became convinced months ago Google was using the Gizmo5 assets to build a desktop client version for Google Voice, which also features voicemail transcription and several other features that leverage the Web browser.

Demo Of Desktop Client

Indeed, the blog even has a demo of the desktop client here to prove it exists.

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington also discovered this plan was bogged down by the fact that Google Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin did not want their company creating desktop-based software, which they consider a relic of the Microsoft’s days of dominance.

Why Page and Brin would allow Google to buy Gizmo5 and start such a desktop project in the first place is another unsolved mystery.

In any case, a grassroots petition has started, discovered by Fortune.

People who desire a desktop VOIP client for Google Voice may navigate to giveusgvdesktop.com. The petition, launched on 2 July, appears poorly timed given the Independence Day holiday in the U.S.

The movement aims to collect 500,000 signatures; only 509 have signed up through early 4 July.

Meanwhile, Google Voice users who want to see certain features that aren’t in the application may make their suggestions in comments after this story here. EWEEK is passing them along to Paquet at Google.