Google gives its Voice to all Americans Google Voice — the new-age telephony thingy that lets you attach a single phone number to multiple phones, turn your voice mails into emails, and thumb your nose at AT&T — is now available to everyone in the US. Previously, the service was invite-only. "After lots of testing and tweaking, we’re excited to open up Google Voice …
This is an awesome service. With Google Voice I have a global voice mail with all of my phones (work mobile - blackberry, personal mobile - eris). Also free SMS...
Now that you can use your existing number, maybe I can sway my wifey to put it on her eris... and free up a few bucks Verizon was getting for her SMS addiction.
Ok, maybe I'm looking at this from a UK perspective, but I don't get it. This would have been a great service 20 years ago, before cross-network SMS was available and when landlines were still the primary contact number. But today?
Looking at that picture:
Voicemail transcription? WTF, everyone I know with voicemail never listens to it. Who uses it? Just send a text - it's what everyone expects and works (and will probably get a reply) even if I'm in a meeting.
One number rings all your phones. Again. WTF. Most people have multiple phones to keep the functions seperate. We've had personal numbers like this since the mid 90's and they've pretty much become useless or irrelivant now everyone has multiple mobiles. The last thing I want is a work call on my personal phone - or personal call on the work phone etc. If someone wants me, they call me. My friends/family have my work number for emergencys. If someone only has a landline number then I probably don't want them to be able call me - not that I ever bother to answer my home phone anyway!
Block callers with one click - what, like the blacklist or reject features many mobiles have had for over 15 years?
Insanely cheap international calls - Not sure what "insanely cheap" means but I hope it's a LOT better than Skype which costs loads more than even a Vodafone prepay phone (5p/min to most of the world). Funny, I thought it was international SMS and roaming that was the main rip off at present.
Forward SMS to your email. Again, FFS, why? It appears on my phone. What could be quicker or simpler?
Persinalised greetings: For what? The voicemail nobody's used in 10 years?
Conference calls: Again, like the GSM feature build in to pretty much every phone I've owned since 1994? What could be easier than setting up a 6 way conference call on a modern iPhone?
Mobile phones are now going "HD"... and much better call quality is loads more interesting to me than a rehash of services from two decades ago.
Don't. get. it. What am I missing?
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