Google acquires VoIP company Global IP Solutions

Google has acquired VoIP company Global IP Solutions (GIPS) for $68.2 million. That means Google will own the VoIP engine that powers the instant messaging systems of its competitors -- i.e. Yahoo!, AOL, AIM, WebEx, Baidu, IBM and more, ZDNet Reports.

According to GIPS CEO Emerik Woods, it will be "business as usual" moving forward and "Google intends to continue servicing GIPS's customers in accordance with existing contracts while offering them the opportunity to transition to new offerings developed by Google."

Of course, Google probably doesn't expect its competition to stay with GIPS beyond the end of these contracts, but it's not clients that Google is after.

You may recall that Google purchased another VoIP company, Gizmo5, last year. Chances are Google will be using both of these acquisitions to integrate VoIP into several products -- including Google Voice and Talk.

Google Voice may have been dormant over the past few months, but we would expect that to change sometime in the near future. Needless to say, folding in VoIP would make Google a powerful alternative to the telcos and we can likely expect some pretty interesting Android-related developments in the near future.