Google Talks to Skype

According to Reuters, Skype is in early discussions with Google about a possible joint venture.  My first guess would be cross-app compatibility with Google Talk, but the talks are apparently in the early phases and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is potentially looking at just buying Skype outright.

Since the talks are still in their infancy, I doubt we'll hear any concrete details about what either company is planning on doing, but it would be great to see Skype reaching out to a more innovative partner.  The last several years, it seems like Skype has fallen behind.  The service is still massively popular, probably more so than ever, but there are also problems with their slow track to profitability, not to mention their software.

I think Facebook clearly has much more to gain out of any deal than Google which already has Google Voice and Google Talk which offer pretty much everything that Skype does.  And with the purchase of Gizmo5 last year, Google has all the parts of a full service voice, video, and VOIP application.  Facebook, on the other hand, could really use a video chatting service directly integrated into their platform.

A joint venture with Facebook and Google would be the best possible outcome, but seeing how these companies have battled with each other over the last few years, that's probably the least likely scenario.  My guess is that Facebook needs Skype more than Google and will probably be willing to offer more money in return.  This is no YouTube moment for Google.

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