My Impressions of Google Voice

I‘ve been playing around with Google Voice for the past couple of days. Before I get into my findings let me review for a moment “what” Google Voice is. I’ll preface this by saying that I perhaps am not the best test candidate to evaluate Google Voice, but I’ll explain why that its in  due course.

Google Voice is a free service offered by Google that give you a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) number. When someone calls that number you can direct what happens to that call based on “rules” which you setup via the Google Voice web interface. Specifically you can “route” that call to any other phone number or multiple numbers at once. The classic example is that you can “route” calls made to you Google Voice Number to your work phone durning the day and then your home phone at night. Another examples is that  you can have calls made to your Google Number from friends go to your cell phone, but unknown number go to voice mail. You can also mark numbers as “spam” which adds an extra layer of protection thwarting annoying calls from telemarketeers, debt collectors, surveys, politician robo-calls, or in-laws.

There is also a feature that allows calls made to you to be “announced” so when you answer the call, you are given the option of sending them right to voice mail, and even eavesdropping on the message they are leaving with the possibility to override it and speak with them.

Of course there is Voice Mail, which is transcribed by Google and emailed to you along with the recording. (sweet)

The service seems targeted towards people with more that one phone number. It gives them the ability to have “1″ number that the world can call to reach them, and that number is completely divorced from any phone company. It also unifies all these numbers under a single (and very slick) voice mail system. For the past 7 years I have had only “1″ number, my cell phone. So adding a Google Voice layer to that seems like an needless hassle.

In my case the Call announce features where not helpful. When I get a call I already know on my cell phone the number that is calling me from Caller ID. When Google Voice sends down a call, it passes the caller ID for that call on down the line. Ergo I had no ideal if the call I was getting originated from a direct dial to my cell phone, or as a forward from Google Voice. Not knowing how the call was handled before it rang my cell phone was an aggravation. If an unknown call had originated through Google Voice, I could answer the phone, listen to the caller identify themselves and choose to accept the call or send them to voice mail. However if the call had NOT originated through Google Voice then answering the call would have required I speak to them, or if I choose to “ignore” the call it would then go into my cell phone providers voice mail thus negating those cool Google Voice voicemail features.

The work around of course would be to turn off my cell phone voice mail (difficult, but not impossible) and have my cell phone number unpublished so that ONLY calls to my cell phone originate through Google Voice. You can turn on and off Caller ID passthrough in the settings, but then all calls from Google Voice look like her are coming from Google Voice.

As I said, I do not think I am the best test candidate to evaluate Google Voice.

I was VERY impressed that I could get a Google Voice Number local to Crossville Tennessee. (931) 287-9287. In fact it seems all (931) 287-9xxx numbers are Google Voice allocations for local dialing in Frontier Communications system. As I write this, I was only able to find one other listing in Crossville using a Google Voice number, “Home Security Crossville”. For what it’s worth it seems Google has gotten that block of numbers from Sprint, and they are “assigned” to Monterey Tennessee, which is in Putnam County. So the numbers may very well be “local” to Cookeville Tennessee as well. This is impressive because I have fought hand, tooth, and nail to get some manor of VOIP or “alternative” phone service is Crossville for years.

I do have some ideals that I think would make Google Voice a much better product.

1. True VOIP integration. Google has a voice Chat system built into Gtalk. It would seem like an easily thing to integrate desktop clients, mobile clients, and even hardware VOIP handsets, into the Google Voice Structure. Incoming calls could be routed to your Gtalk client, or Gtalk could call out with you Google Voice Number. As an added bonus Google could buy Skype. Skype is a full feature VOIP service eBay acquired a couple of years ago, but are now looking to sell.  The last word was that the original Skype creators (the same people who created Kazza, the scourge of the RIAA ) were looking to “buy-back” the spun off Skype from eBay. The benefit to Google for buying Skype would be the rich VOIP software, network, and hardware device infrastructure already being run by Skype. Even providing SIP access into Google Voice would give it Vonage like qualities.

2. Cell Phone Voice Mail integration. Most if not all cell phones allow you to manually set your voicemail provider. This comes pre-programed for the voicemail of your cell company, which is in most cases the same flavor of Nortel voicemail rebranded. There are companies like Youmail.com that provide the ability to host your cellphone voicemail on a far superior system. The way these voicemail systems work is to provide your handset with a number that the incoming call is routed to should you happen not to answer the phone, the phone is not turned on, or out or rang of a tower. This number receives the call which has your cell phone number tagged on it. Using your cellphone number the call is routed to your voicemail box and the call is processed from there (in most cases “processing” means “leave a message”). While is the case for cells phones, most landline hosted voicemail system work off the same premiss. It seems easy for Google to provide a number so that cell phone handsets could use Google Voice’s voicemail. This way even unanswered direct dial calls to cell phones or landlines (with voicemail features) can be processed by the Google Voice voicemail.

3. Google Apps. Google Apps is the hosted domain based email, calendar, google docs, collaboration system. Think of it as gmail for businesses. Google Voice could be used to provide a simple “Virtual PBX” to small businesses and non-proffits. A call to a Google Voice number could route calls to several people based on name. “Thank you for calling TCG, press 1 for McKinley, press 2 for Daniel, press 3 for Rebecca” etc, etc. While on a call flowing across Google Voice, some key combo like ## could put the caller on hold, and give prompts to you for passing the call to another number, or for sending to voicemail. Calls rules could be made to allow fall over from user to user like having a call center. Google could even monazite this by providing advertising during periods were a caller is on hold.

I have to admit, these are kind of my nerd-nava wishes for Google Voice. I  know that Google has a pretty big VOIP infrastructure because of there Goog411 service. That is a 411 service offered by Google, were people can call a toll free number, and use voice recognition to source out business contacts. The caller is then offered to be connected for free to the number they find. These calls are being passed via VOIP. Let’s face it, if you are paying a national long distance bill in 2009 then the fault is yours alone. There is no reason for it and thousands of ways to avoid it. If the phone companies had wised up 10 years ago and abolished long distance, they be making more money now.

I know I for one would pay $$$ for a Google Apps enabled service with hosted voicemail as described above.