Google to buy Norway’s Global IP Solutions for $68 million

Internet giant Google said yesterday that it is buying Norway's Global IP Solutions (GIPS) for $68 million to enhance its real-time video and audio communication technology.

Oslo-listed but San Francisco-based GIPS is the world's most widely deployed technology for processing real-time voice and video over IP networks.

As the inventors of iLBC – an IETF industry standard codec for narrowband speech and iSAC – the de facto industry standard codec for wideband speech, GIPS software delivers robust functionality with enough flexibility to be easily integrated in virtually any application.

Its software is deployed in over 800 million end-points and resolves the full range of network impairments - like delay, jitter, packet loss, and echo.
In addition, GIPS technology offers the highest quality voice and video processing available in the marketplace and has clients like Nortel, Oracle, Samsung, WebEx, Yahoo!, AOL and other key players in the VoIP market.

''The Web is evolving quickly as a development platform, and real-time video and audio communication over the Internet are becoming important new tools for users,'' said Rian Liebenberg, egineering drector at Google. ''GIPS's technology provides high quality, real-time audio and video over an IP network, and we're looking forward to working with the GIPS team at Google to continue innovating for the Web platform.''

''This is an exciting milestone for GIPS as we join Google with a shared vision to transform and accelerate IP communications,'' said Emerick Woods, GIPS CEO. ''With Google's global reach, scale and widely recognised leadership, we are confident that our existing customers will continue to be fully supported while we continue to enhance and extend our products and technology at Google.''