The transition from GrandCentral to Google Voice is now complete. GrandCentral was founded in 2005 as a way to use one phone number to connect many different devices. Google purchased GrandCentral in 2007 and finally opened the project back up to an invitation only beta in 2009 and now have opened it up to the public.
Google Voice has added SMS (text messaging / managing) and (really bad) voice mail transcriptions, but really doesn’t add anything new to services such as UReach, that was started in 1998, and offered you free (back then) 800 telephone numbers you could manage and forward as needed.
The original concept of “One Phone Number” is a useful one though, it frees you from your phone company the same way owning your own domain name frees you from your ISP & email provider.
Freedom is a good thing.
Google Voice is free, so sign up, select a number (a vanity number even) and try it out. If you need a more professional solution, check out UReach.
Positives
- One number frees you from your phone company (porting numbers is a pain)
- Nice integration into the chrome browser and android platform
- Managing SMS (text) messages from anywhere is nice
- Free
Negatives
- Some noticeable voice lag time when using your Google Voice number on your cell phone when talking to someone on a cell phone (not a problem on land lines).
- Using your Google Voice number to navigate a phone tree is painful and doesn’t work in some cases (some numbers are used as commands to Google Voice so when you need to “Press 1 for Support”, the “1″ might not work).
- Free, but once you start using your number and they start charging a fee, you might be stuck.
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