07/12/2010
A little over a year ago, Google released an early
preview of Google Voice, a web-based platform for managing communications. This product introduced one number to ring all your phones (landline, mobile, VOIP, fax, pager),
voicemail that works like email with transcribed copies of incoming voicemails sent to your phone, free calls and text messages to the
U.S. and Canada, low-priced international calls and more—the only catch
was you had to request and receive an invite to try it out. I was lucky enough to be in that first wave of testing. Today, after
lots of testing and tweaking, Google Voice has been opened to
the public, no invitation required.
Over the past year, Google
introduced a mobile
web app, an integrated
voicemail player in Gmail, the ability to use Google
Voice with your existing number and more. Over a
million people are now actively using Google Voice, and many of the
features released over the past year (like SMS
to email and the Chrome
extension) came as a result of user suggestions.
If
you haven’t yet tried Google Voice, you really should. Weigh it against what you currently pay out your nose for, and see for yourself how convenient consolidating your phone lines can be.
(portions excerpted from Google, with edits)
Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, free US long distance, low rates on international calls, and many calling features like transcripts, call blocking, call screening, conference calling, SMS, and more.