Why will Google need telephone companies in the emerging VoIP world? A world in which Google will control the most massive telephone directory (and yellow pages) on earth, and telephone numbers have become utterly obsolete.
Phone company, schmone company. Bosh.
Yet another reason for Google's dark fiber.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The telephone companies carry the internet traffic as a common carrier. VoIP is just TCP/IP networking with voice content, but it travels over transmission facilities owned by the telephone companies. VoIP is just taking the directory number switch out of the equation for desktop to desktop voice traffic. If you actually connect to a real telephone with a directory number, the phone company is still delivering traffic to the end user.