Google GrandCentral is reborn and will now be Google Voice. Google announced today its plans for GrandCentral, the telephony service it acquired in July 2007. GrandCentral will now be known as Google Voice, a comprehensive suite of telephony services, including all of GrandCentral’s features. Google Voice will also include an automated voicemail transcription service, the ability to send and receive text messages, and integration with your Gmail contacts. Users can now also call any number in the the U.S. for free.
Opening up GrandCentral
Google continued to operate the old GrandCentral service after acquiring it, but didn’t allow new users to sign up. But now, Google change their mind and has announced that it will first port existing users over to Google Voice in the next couple of days, and will then open up Google Voice to new users. (Wow! good news)
GrandCentral Returns as Google Voice
The Google Voice Interface
The new interface will look a lot like Gmail, with your inbox, SMS messages, access to voicemail and other features in a sidebar on the left.
How to Make Calls
You can make calls directly from the Google Voice web interface. After you initiate the call, the service will actually first call your mobile phone or landline, and after that your call will be placed over Google’s network.
Calls within the U.S. will remain free, and users can purchase credit to make international calls. Google Voice will also offer free conference calls.
Voicemail
The automated voicemail transcription feature looks like it will be one of the most useful functions of Google Voice. Transcriptions are fully automated and Google will mark passages in the text where the algorithm was not very confident about the transcription. Transcriptions will automatically appear in your inbox, but Google Voice can also email them to you, or even send you an SMS with the text.
Future Integration with Android?
Will Google integrate the voicemail and transcription service with Android as well. In the video below, Google shows the mobile version of Google Voice in the browser on an Android phone. Based on the video, I think Google will release a dedicated Google Voice app for Android in the future and maybe even make it an integral part of the Android experience (if the carriers allow Google to do so, that is).
Google Voice looks like a clear winner. It takes the best features of GrandCentral and adds a number of important and interesting new features like SMS messaging and voicemail transcriptions. Clearly this is one of the most important products that Google has released in the last couple of months.
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