Google Voice Is Your Dream Phone Service. But What Does It Compete With?

Google Voice (GV) is the new version of GrandCentral from Google.  It is a service that gives you one number for all your phones.  Currently, it is only available to existing GrandCentral users, but it will be available to new users within the next few weeks.  The service, in its current guise, is completely free, so you don’t have to worry about your wallet screaming at you.  Google Voice comes packed with many features.  The basic premise is simple: to start things off, you pick your own international number and register your existing phone numbers, be they landlines or cell phones.   From there, you use your existing phones to call into GrandCentral, from which you can call the entire United States for free.  For a nominal fee, you can make calls to the rest of the world.  The rates are often less than traditional international rates and are more in line with what Skype charges for its international calls.

In late 2005, GrandCentral was founded by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet. Fed up with having to run to the other side of the house to answer the home phone, they wanted a way to take all their phones and voicemail in-boxes and unify the experience.  In essence, GrandCentral never aimed to replace your phones, but to glue them together and give them more features, all to make your voice communication easier. In July of 2007, Google acquired GrandCentral for $95 million.  The founders were happy to accept the partnership knowing that they could do more with Google behind them.  Just a few weeks ago, Google officially announced Google Voice, which is the new version of GrandCentral.

So what exactly can Google Voice do for you? As I’ve already mentioned, you start by choosing your own international number.  You then take all the phone numbers you currently have, be they landline, cellular, or otherwise, and let Google Voice know about them.  This essentially becomes the glue that bonds all your separate numbers into a unified communications system.  From there, your new Google Voice number has the ability ring any (or all) of your phones.  That’s the basic functionality: the service has about 20 distinct, yet very integrated features in total.  But the real magic begins here: since Google Voice integrates directly with your Google Contacts list, you have the ability to have extremely fine-grained control over who calls you.  For example, you can group your contacts into different groups (like family, friends, coworkers), and then forward each group to a specific phone number you’ve registered.  Don’t want to get calls from you boss on your home phone?  Forward his calls directly to your cell.  Or you can listen in before taking the call – perhaps to see what mood he’s in.

If that’s not cool enough, Google Voice also comes packed with features that your average phone company would never even thing to offer. For example, one of the most useful features from this service is voice mail: all your messages from all your phones will be available in the GV voice mailbox, which then can be checked online or by dialing your Google Voice number from any of your authorized (registered) phones.  So instead of having to check multiple phones for missed calls, GV does that for you all in one place.  The service transcribes your voice mail messages into text and makes then available to you in an interface that is very similar to that of the excellent Gmail web interface.  GV also gives you the capability to send, receive, and store SMS  from the service.  These can also be accessed online and are displayed in a Gmail-like format.  And the list of features goes on and on: call recording, call screening, call blocking, voicemail sharing… we can’t possibly describe all the features of this amazing service in one blog post.  If you want detailed information about Google Voice, take it straight from “the Google” on the official Google Voice overview page.  Possibly the best thing yet about GV is that it’s free, so it literally wouldn’t cost a penny to give it a try once it is released.

With every product release, Google is pushing the innovation envelope further.  Sure, it gets beaten to the punch once in a while, but sometimes the effects of its products ripple through many industries.  How will Google Voice affect the telco industry?  At first glance, it looks like Google has dealt a death blow to traditional phone companies.  However, that’s not really the whole story: I don’t believe it’s Google’s goal to compete with the telcos.  From a marketing perspective, Google Voice makes phones more convenient to use for consumers.  The product still requires phones to operate.  The product is not (yet) aimed to compete with anything, since it’s truly a one-of-a-kind service.  Over time, it will be interesting to see what role Google Voice will play in the company’s overall monetization strategy.  The company already has its own mobile platform (Android) with a Google Voice app available for it (as well as the Blackberry).  So perhaps Google wants you to use Google Voice with your Google Android cell phone, and forget about your other phones?  What do you think?