Comments on: Google Voice, Now Serving on Your Numbers

By: Links From Tweets 10-31-09 - Twit101

Links From Tweets 10-31-09 - Twit101 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:31:14 +0000

[...] Google Voice Works With YOUR Number [...]

By: Aretha

Aretha — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:20:05 +0000

What I’m wondering is if I can have incoming text messages from specific people go into my google inbox instead of popping up on my mobile device…

in other words I don’t want my lover giving me the side eye when all the hoes from my past try to attempt a booty txt at 3am

By: virtualobscurity

virtualobscurity — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:29:37 +0000

they make money off of international calls. I’ve used it and its great. it basically allows you to make international calls without an international plan on your cell phone. their rates are competitive too.

By: A1QA

A1QA — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:51:42 +0000

What about monetization? If the service is totally free, how will they pay off? On adverts?

By: PacoBell

PacoBell — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:36:26 +0000

Wha… o_O? Ever hear of YouTube? Which rock did you crawl out from under recently?

By: Probate Attorney

Probate Attorney — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:50:46 +0000

Concept sounds good and useful. As the service is free from Google

By: Raymond Padilla

Raymond Padilla — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:17:32 +0000

The voicemail transcription feature of Google Voice is a fantastic source of unintentional comedy. It’s amazing how it can turn harmless little messages into suggestive propositions.

By: Dominik

Dominik — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:49:25 +0000

What happens if you want to port your number back to a carrier from Google Voice?

By: Vipul Bhatt

Vipul Bhatt — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:24:00 +0000

Robert,

“..eventually its accuracy will improve”..

Some of us have been waiting for that day to arrive for 15 years now. To improve speech recognition accuracy, training data is necessary but not sufficient. Background noise and variations in human speech is keeping speech recognition accuracy limited. It may get good enough for voicemail in a few years, though, partly because popularity of Google Voice may bring a certain acceptance of inaccurate speech recognition. (But there are other mobile apps like email dictation where the accuracy needs to be still higher.)

By: les madras

les madras — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:59:04 +0000

looks to me, if your phone is off the voicemail will go to the carrier voicemail box. is that the case?

By: Arjun

Arjun — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:47:08 +0000

This ‘keep your number’ solution is nothing new, and is not nearly as integrated as one thinks (looking at the video, for example). Google uses ‘call forward on no answer’ to forward incoming calls from your mobile to their voice mail server (that is the special ‘setup’ you do on your phone). Other companies have been doing this for a while.

My problem with such solutions:
1. It breaks the native voice mail interface of your phone. For example, it breaks iphone’s visual voice mail because the call was ‘forwarded’ as far as your network is concerned
2. Remember that certain operators may charge you for ‘two call legs’ each time you forward a call this way.

By: Arie Rich

Arie Rich — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:33:03 +0000

I had this service through Grand Central, then it rolled over to Google Voice or they sent me an invite to Google Voice. I signed up but I haven’t used the service yet. I’ll give it a try one day. I really want a Google Wave invite so I can do a review on it. That I would definitively use more often, since Im always on my email. LOL.

Great post!

Thanks,

Arie Rich
kmpblog.com

By: swag

swag — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:24:26 +0000

Sorry, Om, but watching videos online to me is like listening to voice mails. Who has the serial-seeking patience for that?

By: Robert Poe

Robert Poe — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:06:05 +0000

This undermines companies like YouMail (which acquired the free consumer business of GotVoice in January) and others that offer free voice mail (using the same forwarding method as Google Voice), and try to make money charging for transcription.

For now, the for-pay transcription services offer superior accuracy and quality, but as you mention Google learns from every free transcription it offers (via the little “Transcription useful?” checkboxes next to the transcribed messages), so eventually its accuracy will improve.

By: Capt. Spastic

Capt. Spastic — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:01:11 +0000

Depending on your carrier, some allow you to forward SMS/TXT messages.

Or, as even with Google Voice, just the way it works with phone calls, it also works with TXT messages. If you give people your Google Voice number, they can TXT message to that number, and you will receive it both on your mobile handset, as well as Google Inbox.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:23:17 +0000

I have used RingCentral for years as a voice/fax inbox, love having one place for all those messages. So I can see Google Voice Messages being popular for people who want the extra features and consolidation of land-line and mobile messages.

But Google’s implementation may confuse people who don’t understand that the “Activate Voicemail” link means that you are ditching your existing carrier’s voicemail system.