[wired] Google Voice is coming to cell phones, bringing with it cheap overseas calls, free SMS messages, instant translation of voice messages into text and a single phone number to control all of your phones.
The mobile version is currently only available for Android OS phones or Blackberrys, and you need to already have be one of its invitation-only beta users. That’s expected to change shortly when the service, built around its acquisition of a company called GrandCentral, opens to all.
When that comes, one would also expect an app for Windows Mobile phones and the iPhone. Google Voice comes with a panoply of features that no wireless carrier comes close to matching. Think of being able to program your phone to automatically shunt calls from your landlord to voice mail, but send calls from your spouse immediately to ring to all of your phones.
But really the mobile app is about two things: extending Google’s reach so that more of its users’ lives runs through Google’s all-seeing code where they can be served ads. And secondly, it’s a jab at the wireless carriers, which have long acted as if their subscribers belonged to them, charging entrance fees for outsiders to offer services to them.
Now Google has made a better phone service than any offering you can get from a traditional telecom. That’s an attempt to turn wireless carriers into dumb data pipes, since all a user now needs to get control over their voicemail, messages and phone number is install an application.
Telecoms will hate this product. It will cost them millions to duplicate its basic features, which they will have to do to compete.
Of course, if the phone companies had sat down five years ago and thought about what they could do to make phone service better, rather than more profitable, then companies like Google and Apple wouldn’t be so successful at demolishing their business models.
Google Voice Now Available for Mobile Phones
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