Logitech bought Sightspeed for 30 million bucks yesterday. Congrats to Peter Csathy and the crew in Berkeley. After giving birth to the infamous “Sightspeed Guy” and forming a number of worthwhile licensing agreements for raising Sightspeed’s visibility in the industry, the makers of the best videoconferencing tool on the planet have cashed in on a seven-year journey.

Sightspeed is a community-centric desktop app that offers PSTN dial-out and runs on both Macintosh and Windows. It’s been hailed by many as offering the best video quality among desktop video chat programs, and it competes against Skype, Gizmo, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and iChat.

Not sure what this means for Vlip, the video discussion service also run by the Sightspeed folks, but I can only imagine that Logitech was interested in it as well.

FREMONT, Calif., Oct. 28, 2008 and ROMANEL-SUR-MORGES, Switzerland, Oct. 29, 2008— Logitech International (SIX: LOGN) (Nasdaq: LOGI) today announced that the company has agreed to acquire privately held SightSpeed Inc. of Berkeley, Calif. for approximately $30 million in cash. SightSpeed is an award-winning provider of high-quality Internet video communications services. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in early November.
The acquisition of SightSpeed will provide Logitech with video calling technology and a software and services development team that can be focused on future video calling initiatives that can enable cross-platform video communications with an intuitive, lifelike experience, for people sitting in front of a personal computer or with their family in a living room.
“With this acquisition, we are significantly augmenting our current video R&D resources to help us move more quickly toward our goals for video services that complement the way people socialize, communicate and enjoy entertainment,” said Junien Labrousse, executive vice president of Logitech’s Products group.
“According to our research, there is a large untapped market of people who want to communicate with friends and family using video. But they want it to be integrated into their family lifestyle, which means going beyond the PC. We believe with SightSpeed we can help create the next wave of video communications enthusiasts.”
Founded in 2001, SightSpeed has approximately 25 employees. The company’s management team includes technology leaders with backgrounds in Internet services and software technology development. The SightSpeed services are based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), a standard that enables the services to be interoperable with other Internet communication services.