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The Windows maker has purchased privately held San Francisco-based Teleo, a VoIP provider.

Microsoft Buys Place At VoIP Table
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Remember Microsoft? Redmond company, makes Windows, makes Office, makes the Xbox 360. Has a lot of liquid cash. Yeah, that Microsoft. With all the swarming buzz about Google Talk and what might be an Apple phone, Microsoft has been pretty quiet when it comes to talking.

A press release from the Redmond campus notes Microsoft has purchased Teleo, a VoIP software and services provider. Teleo's product can be used to make calls from PCs to traditional phones. One almost expects the MSN butterfly to go strolling past the Googleplex with a big "Can you hear me now?" sign.

"Teleo has great technology to deliver superior VoIP quality and an excellent overall customer experience," said MSN's Blake Irving, corporate vice president, in the statement. "This acquisition opens up infinite opportunities for Microsoft to enable even more relationship-centric communications experiences for our customers in the future."

Teleo has been placed within Microsoft's MSN properties. The company plans to "ultimately deliver new VoIP consumer applications in future releases of MSN services, such as MSN Messenger." As an MSN labeled property, it is likely Teleo's first impact outside of MSN Messenger would be on MSN Search result pages.

MSN Messenger currently supports PC to PC calling. With Teleo, Microsoft has a product that can be integrated with its Outlook and Internet Explorer applications. Clicking on a phone number appearing on-screen will launch Teleo and initiate the call.

Internet Explorer maintains a dominant share of the browser market. That pervasive presence combined with Teleo integration could push VoIP into even greater usage and acceptance. It wouldn't be a stretch to consider how Microsoft would extend Teleo into other Microsoft products.

For small to medium businesses that rely on Excel to handle a variety of data management tasks, Teleo could make a connection to a vendor via a listed phone number in a spreadsheet a trivial action to perform. In Word, a Hollywood agent reading a great screenplay would be able to click on the writer's phone number and make a dream come true.

One interesting note on the MSN Teleo page, as it's called now, is listed with some questions and answers about the acquisition. Perhaps being more aware of customer concerns, Microsoft notes that the Teleo customer information it now owns will be used to resolve billing and technical issues only.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.