Breaking: Grand Central Website To Shut Down December 31

Some of us have been using Google Voice (GV) for the last few months and loving it! All the while, the GrandCentral service – the precursor to GV – was still alive and well. Today, however, GrandCentral account holders began receiving emails informing them that the service will be closing its doors December 31, 2009. To us this means Google thinks enough GrandCentral users have migrated to Google Voice that it can safely wind down the old service. Here’s the full email from GrandCentral:

Dear GrandCentral User (alexluft16):

We’re writing to let you know that we will be closing down the GrandCentral website as of December 31, 2009.

All GrandCentral accounts were upgraded to Google Voice earlier this year, but since that time, you’ve still been able to log-in to your GrandCentral account and listen to old messages there. You will no longer be able to log-in to your GrandCentral account after December 31. Because of this, we strongly suggest downloading any messages or contacts that you want to keep in the next 43 days.

We will send you another reminder before closing down the site, but we suggest you take action now to download any information you want to keep.

- The Google Voice Team

For anyone who needs invites to Google Voice, we have a few left – so please leave a comment and we’ll send them out on a first-comment-first-served basis.