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Microsoft buys TellMe
Wednesday - March 14, 2007 04:12 PM in
The big news today in the speech recognition world is the acquisition of TellMe by Microsoft for something north of $800 million.
TellMe was the golden child of the golden age of speech recognition--that period of time after the IPOs of Nuance and SpeechWorks, and before the collapse of the dot-com bubble. The company was one of the early promoters of the idea of a "voice portal" back when VCs were eager to believe that telephones and web browsers could be completely analogous.
More recently, they've been big into hosted speech services, and they have continued to employ some of the most creative and talented VUI designers in the industry.
I'm of two minds on this acquisition: on the one hand, I'm glad to see TellMe and BeVocal both get their deserved liquidity events, with good prices and premier acquirers for both.
On the other hand, Microsoft has a decidedly mixed record in phone-based speech recognition, and not much of a track record selling hosted services. I have a fear that in 24 months not much of today's TellMe will still exist, and Microsoft will have mainly succeeded in seeding a great diaspora of speech recognition expertise.
Posted by Peter Leppik
More recently, they've been big into hosted speech services, and they have continued to employ some of the most creative and talented VUI designers in the industry.
I'm of two minds on this acquisition: on the one hand, I'm glad to see TellMe and BeVocal both get their deserved liquidity events, with good prices and premier acquirers for both.
On the other hand, Microsoft has a decidedly mixed record in phone-based speech recognition, and not much of a track record selling hosted services. I have a fear that in 24 months not much of today's TellMe will still exist, and Microsoft will have mainly succeeded in seeding a great diaspora of speech recognition expertise.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 04:12 PM by | | | |