One of Google’s newest free products – available to the public soon – is Google Voice, which builds off of the GrandCentral Virtual PBX product they acquired last year. The voice service is currently only available by invitation only and for users that previously were customers of GrandCentral, but it is hoped that it will be more widely released in the near future.
There are many short videos showing how Google Voice works with your phones, and from what I can see Google has done it yet again. They have successfully provided calling features that go above and beyond making a simple phone call while simultaneously creating features that I never knew I needed, but instantly want.
The Google phone number isn’t actually attached to a specific phone, instead you decide which of your existing phones (work, home, cell, etc.) will ring after someone calls your Google number. You can designate which phone rings based on the group they belong to or on an individual basis, and there are a wide variety of other features once the call has been connected.
Some of the key features that will be offered with Google Voice are:
- Ability to put certain callers into a ‘Spam’ folder or block their calls entirely
- Conference calling
- Call recording
- Can switch to another registered phone in the middle of a call
- Transcripted Voicemails
- Listen to your voicemails online and ability to download or forward them
- Customize your voicemail greeting for different callers
One thing I didn’t see available is the ability to place and receive calls using the Internet, like we do with RingCentral. It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to adopt that feature as well (I figure it is inevitable – just a matter of time). Also, I have heard that while Google Voice works very well with your Gmail account, it doesn’t yet integrate with Google Apps accounts and I haven’t seen if that is on the horizon.
I have requested my invitation for the Google Voice service and look forward to testing it out as soon as I can. If you have already tested it out, let us know what you think!
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