Lawrence, share your back of the envelope for the billion? It’s an interesting question. Any idea/guesses how many developer years have been put it into it?

I think there’s a different purpose/focus to the work in Google done in 2020 than in 2012 with regards to WebRTC.

I have no clue how much they’ve invested in total, but it would be a sabstantial amount.

Your analysis of “value of WebRTC to Google” is based solely on their apps, where I agree results have been iffy. However, a significant additional goal (stated at the time) and benefit has been to drive Chrome to be the #1 used browser by making it a complete application delivery platform. And this then supports the whole Chromebook market as well – which could not support many widely used use cases like contact centers and video sessions (with anyone’s conferencing apps) without WebRTC. Of course WebRTC was just a piece of HTML5 and other capabilities needed for Chrome/Chromebook success, but an important one.

My belief is that about $1 billion has been spent on the “free” WebRTC core technology we all use every day, accounting for Google’s original acquisitions, plus follow-on work by Google and others. What’s your estimate?

This all means that we in this part of the communications industry owe Google a big Thank You!