I finally got my Google Voice invite
Last week, I finally got the email I waited months to get:
You are invited to open a free Google Voice account.
If you know about Google Voice, you’ll understand my excitement. If you don’t, read on.
Google Voice is a free service that uses Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology to allow management of phone communication, including voice, text messages and voicemail.
Here’s a quick overview:
The service has been described simply as “one number to rule them all.” Users can choose a number in most U.S. area codes. Vanity numbers are even available. The Google Voice number then becomes the user’s central contact number. A simple web interface allows the user to link that number to existing lines — work, mobile, home, etc.
Call Routing
Calls to the Google Voice number can be routed in any number of ways, even down to the level of individual callers. For example, I can configure the service so that if my wife calls, all my phones (home, work and mobile) will ring simultaneously. When I answer, the call is routed to the correct phone through Google’s network. Unknown callers can be sent directly to voicemail or blocked outright.
Routing rules can also be enforced on a group basis. This means that I can restrict work contacts from calling me at home, or send family calls to all my phones.
In-Call Management
Google Voice offers several features during a call. Press “star” while on a call, and your other phones will ring, allowing you to transfer the call to another phone. Press 4, and Google Voice will record the call and make it available to listen or download from the Google Voice site. If another call comes in while the user is on a call, he can merge the calls into a conference call. The process can be repeated, allowing four callers to confer simultaneously.
Voicemail
This is where Google Voice really shines. Users can configure different outgoing messages for different classes of callers — informal for friends and family, or strictly business for work contact. Greetings can even be customized to individual callers.
Voicemail messages are stored online and can be retrieved by phone or via the web. When a caller leaves a voicemail message, a Google algorithm transcribes the audio into text and notifies the user via email or text message. In practice, the quality of the voicemail transcription is poor. Transcription is by far the weakest link in the Google Voice system, but it’s improving.
Mobile access
Google has created Google Voice applications for the Android and Blackberry platforms, allowing users to access the full spread of features from their mobile devices. Users of other mobile devices can access a limited feature set via a mobile website.
Looking ahead
The biggest drawback to Google Voice — the one thing that will keep people from using it — is the high switching costs. It’s just a big hassle to change phone numbers, inform all your contacts, update business cards and the like. I’ve had the same phone number for more than five years, and I’m pretty tied to it. But Google plans to allow users to port their existing number to Google Voice. If Google can pull this off, the results would be huge. Users could transition seamlessly and switching costs would fall to almost zero. It remains to be seen whether mobile carriers will cooperate, however.
Are you excited yet? Go get an invite.
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