The Times Online in the UK is reporting that Google is gearing up to do battle with entrenched telecom giant BT (over 70% of UK households use BT phone lines). Regular readers of BigBrainBoy are already accustomed to unlikely companies offering unlikely services in the wild west gold rush that is broadband. Even by those standards this becomes a fascinating study in futurism because linking Google to your phone line can have dramatic implications:

Mr Hewitt said that a Google telephone service could be made to link with the Google search engine, which already conducts half of all internet inquiries made around the world. A surfer looking for a clothes retailer could simply find the web site and click on the screen to speak to the shop.

Now that earlier article we posted about Google looking for excess fiber optic capacity is starting to make some sense. Google is not coming up with new VOIP technology since according to the piece they will be rebranding Skype’s already popular phone-over-the-internet technology.