Growing Motivations Behind Google's Acquisition of Jibe

I believe there were several motives that propelled Google to pull the trigger this past week on acquiring RCS player Jibe.  This is part of their multi-pronged attack on the consumer need for communications and interactivity. Having worked at Verizon Wireless to help define their Rich Communications strategy and service realization back in 2010, there are a range of drivers that come to mind that I note below.

As with many mobile carrier efforts, the GSMA's Rich Communications Suite (RCS) has been plagued by slow adoption and weak execution. Even after watering down the original (more feature rich) version of RCS, carriers struggle with embracing and driving consumer adoption for the suite of new enhanced messaging services enabled by RCS.  Google has had its hand in driving adoption of WebRTC however on the desktop browser front. Some of this carrier challenge with RCS is due to their DNA being primarily a mover of bits and wireless infrastructure engineering expertise, but also due to their loss of control of the handset.  Today, there is very, very little Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile content or customization on your latest smartphone here in the US.  There is even less carrier content that actually gets used or adds value to the consumer.  Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is going to happen and that is the last opportunity for carriers to layer in some value-add around their investment in IMS technology with integral voice, video chat, rich messaging, voicemail transcription, multi-ring mobile / landline, and presence indicators. Enterprise Unified Communications is a different beast.  Carriers may not gain from Google's push into RCS here, depending upon Google's ultimate motivations.

Similar to what I am seeing with my efforts in the mHealth / Healthcare IT space with a vast amount of wearables devices, mobile / IoT platforms and the array of clinical systems / EHRs, this is not a technology problem.  It is about integration / compatibility, organizational execution and the right inspired innovation around an overwhelming amount of available technology and platforms. 

Here is my view of Google’s drivers behind scooping up Jibe:

1. Compete with Apple iMessage - Google Hangouts and its predecessor Google Chat struggle to gain the adoption of iMessage on Apple devices.  
2. RCS Integration - It may be hard (or a just a pain) for the Android team to do custom integration to each mobile carrier variant of RCS implementation. Having a more formal native RCS solution may be easier for Android to take a more active role in defining the interfaces/APIs and enabling set of capabilities that are pre-integrated into the companion set of Google services.  So this would be an RCS interface on one side facing the carriers and 3rd party app developers and Hangout video / chat / presence, Google Voice messaging and Gmail compatibility on the other side.
3. Facebook Messenger Threat - As Facebook moves more to become a full blown messaging platform, Google may see this as a threat and seek ways to differentiate its efforts around messaging and integrated communication services.
4. Carrier Marketing – Mobile carrier incentives to adopt RCS based services could motivate carriers to more heavily market Android vs. iOS devices.
5. ​More Integral Mobile Play - Expand Google Hangouts and Google Voice (mainly overlay services today) into more integrated and feature rich mobile offering native to smartphone core functions and a consumer’s mobile identity. Google loves to experiment and learn from beta rollouts and RCS does fit into that bucket and adds to its repertoire of IP communications services. 
6. Enhanced Messaging Framework - Extend the native Android messaging framework to developers to help build the next WhatsApp, SnapChat or Instagram around the Google platform.
7. Mobile Brain Trust - Acquire Google staff that can speak the language of the GSMA, 3GPP, IMS, IR.92, and mobile network QoS among the carrier community if they indeed aim to take over the complete mobile user experience.
8. RCS Hedge - If RCS takes off, Google would need to have a play and want to avoid being a laggard.  Outside the mobile world, Google has a history of driving certain standards to its own benefit.  Look back at their purchase of On2 and efforts with WebM and what is now the VP9 codec for web video.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-30/google-plans-to-standardize-messaging-with-jibe-acquisition

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