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IT EXPO Keynote: Yahoo! Inc’s Brad Garlinghouse
[October 25, 2005]

IT EXPO Keynote: Yahoo! Inc’s Brad Garlinghouse


TMCnet Communications and Broadband Columnist
 
Yahoo Inc.’s Vice President of Communications Products Brad Garlinghouse sees two elephants in the living room and he wants to clear them out. 
 
No, he hasn’t been soaking in to much of Los Angeles’ notorious nightlife.  Rather, Garlinghouse said Monday in his keynote presentation, “Writing the Voice Playbook,” at the IT EXPO that he merely wants to dispel two commonly held misconceptions in the industry.


 
First, contrary to some commentators, Garlinghouse said that Yahoo! and Microsoft changed the communications game with the interoperability of their IM services.

 
“I think that the announcement made a week before was the first step in the industry toward interoperability,” Garlinghouse said.  “Yahoo! every day connects four times as many instant messages as AT&T connects phone calls.”
 
The elephant that Garlinghouse cleared out was that VoIP will not kill the PSTN, as many have predicted.
 
“I think it’s just not happening,” Garlinghouse proclaimed.  “There is no doubt that VoIP has represented a huge transformation.”
 
Garlinghouse noted, however, that it is extremely difficult to change consumers’ behaviors; it shouldn’t be lost that there are still one million rotary phones in use in the United States.
 
VoIP 1.0 in Garlinghouse’s mind is Skype -- basic PC to PC calling that is not rich in applications or in the experience -- it is not a bridge to building converged networks.
 
Taking a Skype Swipe, Garlinghouse said that while the Luxembourg-based P2P provider claims to have 54 to 55 million downloads, there are less than 10 million active users taking advantage of the application.
 
“When you talk about VoIP 2.0, you are not talking about cheap calling,” he said.  Instead, VoIP 2.0 must trigger applications and personalization, much like what Web 2.0 is accomplishing in place of Web 1.0.
 
“Over time, [we will] not think of Voice over IP, but Communications over IP,” Garlinghouse added.
 
Included in the new rich experience are networks and devices, which are colliding such that PCs are now telephones and cell phones are also cameras.  For Yahoo!, applications, such as IM, SMS, e-mail, voice and video are colliding.
 
Building bridges between the IP networks and the PSTN is paramount, Garlinghouse said. 
 
Equally important, Garlinghouse said, is providing the user with control over how they want to be communicated with – to manage communications the way that they want.
 
“Communications should simplify my life,” Garlinghouse said.
 
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Ted Glanzer is assistant editor for TMCnet. For more articles by Ted Glanzer, please visit:
 
 

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