IT, Communications, google
Should You Sign Up for Google Voice? Xconomy Readers Share Their Beta Experiences
Wade Roush 6/22/09
Back in March, I wrote a column about Google Voice, the reincarnated version of a voicemail unification service that Google acquired from Grand Central back in 2007. The free service gives you a single phone number for life that isn’t tied to any particular land line or cellular device—instead, calls ring through to whichever phones you specify. Voicemails get stored online and (if you want) transcribed into text e-mails. In my column, I called Google Voice “the end of the phone as we know it,” since a Google Voice number resembles an e-mail address more than an old-fashioned phone line. It goes with you everywhere, can be managed entirely through the Web, and literally turns your voicemails into e-mails.
Google Voice was, and still is, in a private, invitation-only, beta testing phase. When I checked with Google early last week, employees were still saying the service will be available to the general public “soon”—which is the same thing they were saying back in March. But the big day may be approaching. While rumors circulating last week about the service’s impending launch turned out to be false, Google Voice product manager Craig Walker did state, via his public Twitter stream, that “We’re cranking 24/7 to get there.”
In conjunction with my March column, Google kindly provided 100 Google Voice beta invitations for Xconomy readers—and not surprisingly, all of the invitations were snapped up within an hour after we publicized the offer. So in anticipation of the public launch of Google Voice, I decided to ping the lucky 100 beta account winners last Friday to find out how the service has been working out for them, and whether they’d recommend it to others.
The readers who’ve written back so far have been lavish with their praise—at least, the ones who have actually been using their accounts. Several have admitted that they never signed up, or that they signed up but found that Google Voice wasn’t what they expected, or that, as one reader put it, “I would have liked to [use it] but then work (life?) got in the way.” More about the potentially high barriers to adoption below.
Readers who’ve used Google Voice seem to like the way it lets them give out a single phone number to everyone, rather than separate office, home, and cell numbers. Several readers said they like the (somewhat sneaky) feature that lets users listen to callers as they’re leaving a voicemail, and break in if they want to talk to that person directly. And if there’s one feature everyone loves, it’s the automatic transcription of voicemail messages into e-mails—a Google invention that wasn’t part of the original Grand Central service. While Google’s speech-to-text technology is far from perfect, readers say it’s good enough to get the gist of a message across, and that it saves them from the universally dreaded task of actually listening to all their voicemail. (You can browse readers’ detailed comments below.) Xconomy’s CEO and editor-in-chief, Bob Buderi, has been using Google Voice since March, and he also cites voicemail transcription as his favorite feature.
Readers report surprisingly few technical glitches or other difficulties using Google Voice. The problems they do cite tend to be ones that are baked into the service’s design. Most people said it’s too much trouble to make outgoing calls through Google Voice, since users must either call their own Google Voice number first, or go to the Google Voice website. Which leads to another frequent complaint—the caller ID problem. Unless you place all your outgoing calls through Google Voice, then the people you call will see the number of the device you’re calling from, rather than your Google Voice number. That means you have to train everyone not to store your device’s number in their contact list, but to call you back on your Google Voice number instead. That’s plain confusing for everyone.
Asked to say whether they’d recommend Google Voice to a friend or a family member, quite a few readers said “Yes, but…” The “but” was that they’d only recommend it to people who are technically adept—”power users,” in one reader’s phrase. As another reader put it: “The person who is going to use [it] needs to be a bit of a techie (not super technical, but my wife who is not technical would get lost in the concept)…[there are] lots of configuration options which I enjoyed learning and setting up.”
How much have Xconomy readers actually used their Google Voice accounts, in the end? That varies. Some say they’ve made their Google Voice number into their main phone number, and that they use the service extensively every day. Others say …Next Page »
Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at (617) 252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wroush.
6/22/09 9:31 am
I tried to give my GV number to selected folks as my phone number. Old contacts never quit calling cell number I’ve had since 1995. New contacts eventually caught cell number and called it directly. Total failure. Need to exchange GV number to cell phone and old cell phone number to GV. Then GV would work as envisioned. So far, dont see a way of doing that.
Success path for me: put GV on do not disturb. Changed cell phone voice mail to point to GV rather than carrier’s voice mail. Cell phone voice mails go to GV, get transcribed and sent to email account. Pretty good tool at this point. I now use it daily. Maybe less use than Google hoped, but perfect for me.
6/22/09 10:32 am
Wade, you and your readers may be interested in Skydeck’s mashup with Google Voice:
http://skydeck.com/blog/announcements/google-voice-mashup
Skydeck addresses some of the biggest problems that you bring up. You don’t need to change your number and you don’t need to change the way you make phone calls. Right now we support Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile phones.
Best
Jason
6/22/09 11:38 am
Wow, I wish I had scooped up one of the beta invites… I’m really anxious to try it out and have tons of uses for it as I’ve been living over in Europe for a while now and need an easier way to manage the numbers i have in the US & over here…. if anyone still has a beta invite that they didn’t activate, i’d love to put it to use! You can email me at ryan.haugarth at gmail.. I’d really appreciate it!
6/22/09 7:22 pm
i missed out on that annoucement=\. Can someone please invite me to the program or send me invite that not activate. appreciate for your help. email = speedtechnologies at yahoo.com
6/22/09 10:24 pm
I’ve been an avid Google Voice user from the day I signed up. Having used Bill Warner’s Wildfire for 15 years, I was used to the “ultimate” phone concierge with an incredible female receptionist’s voice to boot. There’s no question that the transcription feature is one of the more compelling capabilities. While it’s available with other services (SimulScribe), having it integrated out of the box (phone) is a real benefit. Truthfully, I have few, if any complaints. More than anything, I have lots of requests — like — since Google Voice has my contact list, there ought to be a way for Google Voice to initiate a call for me without my remembering the phone number through voice recognition or prompting with the first few letters of the name of the person I am calling. This was one of the beauties of Wildfire. Actually, the Google Voice designers ought to touch base with Rich Miner who was at Wildfire and ought to be able to help blend the best of both worlds! Thanks again for the beta. I love it!
6/23/09 3:18 pm
I wasn’t lucky enough to get a beta invite but from what I’ve read it doesn’t look like GV works as a main business number.
The issue I have with Google Voice is there can’t be multiple extensions associated with the account so for a small business there is no option for pick ext. 1 for Joe, 2 for Amy, etc. There are two of us at my office and we need our own voicemails. Am I missing something or am I correct on my assumption?
I’m looking into Toktumi, http://www.toktumi.com/WhyToktumi.aspx
I haven’t spoken with anyone that has used them but the feature set looks great on paper. Anyone have any experience with them? I’m thinking of giving them a try but I’d like to hear some feedback before I go down the number porting path. Thanks.
6/23/09 4:05 pm
Hi Wade:
Thanks for an excellent article on the pros and cons of Google Voice. I’m in the online phone business myself and we are all watching GV very carefully as they have the potential to eat our lunch! Some will be in trouble (e.g. SpinVox and PhoneTag sell voicemail transcription for a fee – that’s dead), others will survive by focusing on different niches. My company Toktumi may be of interest to some of your readers if they contemplate using GV for a business.
Okay here comes the shameless promotion but I wanted to share this with your readers as I thought some might find it helpful – particularly those that have decided to strike out on their own and run their own business.
Toktumi is like a professional-grade version of Google Voice, designed for businesses that don’t want to trust their calls to a free service, who need service level guarantees and live customer support. In additional to GV-like features, we offer business features like auto-attendant, 800 numbers, a PC softphone, fax, desktop sharing, and a new mobile app called Line2 launching on the iPhone in a few weeks, similar to GV Mobile.
There’s a free 30 day trial available at the toktumi website if people want to check us out.
6/24/09 7:03 pm
I have a Google Voice number. I don’t use it. Think I’ve used it once or twice since I got it over a year ago. You get what you pay for, in this case you pay nothing.
7/11/09 5:21 pm
Good, GV is awsome,i got invitation from my friend..signed it up..working great i need to learn more about it ..one solution and one call for multiple destination where ever you are there google voice will follow..dont miss it..who ever has just sign it and enjoy the service..soon world will be a local call…Thanx Rajuvamuda
7/23/09 1:26 am
Been using Grand Central before it was turned into Google Voice. I was a bit shy about giving it out to contacts as I didn’t fully understand the power but I made the switch this spring when they renamed the service. Good stuff, one of my favorite new toys this year other than the iPhone.