Google Voice, what the hell is that you say? In one of Google’s rather low-key acquisitions, they purchased a phone start-up called GrandCentral (founded in 2006) for about $50 million in cash mid 2007, GrandCentral offered a seriously valuable product; “one phone number for all your phones, for life“. Can you imagine how many contacts you loose changing jobs, switching carriers, houses, apartments, states? Well Google Voice is the answer, you’ll get a single phone number for life, that rings or texts any phone you own, with a single voicemail box… and best if all, it’s free!
So why would you use it? Simple, you’ll only ever give out one number, administer it online, and send calls or texts to different devices depending on who or when people are trying to contact you! Ok, ok, there are problems too, like how do I get my contacts to use the new number and throw out the old? Well, I’m sure there will be one of Googles famous FAQ’s for that!
But if it’s free, what’s in it for Google? Well if it takes off, they will effectively control millions of phone numbers, that (with the right strategy) could be monetised a multitude of ways! So get ready, go check out the Google Voice website here. Thanks to TechCrunch for posting a great article.
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March 13th, 2009 at 4:32 am
Great! I signed up for Grand Central not long after they bought it and was fairly sure it was a huge waste of time and money. Great idea, but they never replied to my emails and it didn’t seem to work very well…
I hope this new version is better and they start supporting it.
March 14th, 2009 at 12:11 am
This will help people looking for work. When employers are calling for an interview they want the easiest way to reach a person by phone. They don’t want to go through a list of numbers …
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:06 am
Unfortunately, not available in Australia???
JD