Google Voice formally launched for existing users of Grand Central

All New “Google Voice” as indicated in our earlier post was launched yesterday. An announcement on Google’s Blog was made indicating the availability of service to existing users of Grand Central (the company which was acquired by Google for this).

Google Voice helps users in consolidating their voice calls and messages. All being done from your Personal Computer over internet. Once you register with Google Apps – you will get a Google Number – a telephone number which you can keep for life. Now any call you get at this number can be:

• Screened based on preset criteria
• Listened before taking call
• Blocked based on preset criteria
• Answered online on a PC or Call online (at present calling is only available to US Numbers only)
• Routed to your other phone numbers

Using the Google Number you can also send text messages (SMS) and recieve text messages.

The other important feature is rich voice mail (may be you can call it as Voice mail 2.0). Apart from listening to your voicemail and getting notifications – you can get the transcripts of your voice mail too. More so you can now have a personalized message based on who is calling (wow). And you can share the voice mails too.

You may already be using conference calling, Some of the cool voice features while talking to someone are – recording a call, switching the calls between phones, and setting your call preferences by group.

Google voice seems to be a tough competition for Skype – who may now be forced to upgrade its service to include the features it is missing now. What may be killer for Google is the seamless integration of this feature with other Google services like mail. Just imagine we are removing all boundaries – no restriction of devices, platforms – just and just communication.

Related posts

• Use Google GrandCentral to aggregate your voice mail messages (1)