Tom Keating has a blog post about Google's VoIP Plans. (Cue the Dr. Evil laugh). What Google is trying to do, according to Google VP of Product Management, Bradly Horowitz's hints at their future roadmap when he said, "What we're trying to do with telephony is give people a seamless experience that frees up their telephony communication from the silos where it's lived for the last decade. Voicemail, my contacts, all of those things have been segregated from the rest of my Web experience. We have big plans to do a better job."

VoIP Providers should be well on their way to this point or even past it by now. I won't rant about the missed opportunities with unified messaging (which is basically what Google delivers to a degree with Google Voice now), but I will rant about the noise to signal ratio when it comes to Unified Communications. It has become the keyword everyone has used in this industry in 2009 without truly defining it or actually delivering it. It has been vague, complex, complicated, and without an owner's manual.  Maybe it will take Google to scare some providers into re-thinking. Re-thinking what?

• Marketing message  (wouldn't it be great to say better than Google?)
• Sales Pitch  (not about savings, but about ease of use)
• Customer Portal/GUI  (Stupid easy and intuitive)
• Owner's manual/training (YouTube?)
• Product management (it's what benefits the customer; what they will buy)