Google Voice!

Google Voice!

I heard about Google Voice (GV) 6 months or so ago, and I was hooked right then and there. Everything Google does seems to be amazing, so I signed up to be emailed when GV service became active. Well, they just started sending out invitations to those who signed up, and I jumped at the chance. I found the perfect phone number, which is what sold me from the starting gate - I got to choose my phone number out of tons of choices, and they let you search for certain strings of numbers to help you find the number you want. I couldn't imagine a better phone number than the one I got.

Features I like (FYI, I don't get phone reception where I work)

• You get to pick your phone number
• I know if I have voicemails while I'm at work
• I can listen to voicemails while I'm at work
• I know if I have text messages while I'm at work
• I can send/receive/reply to text messages while I'm at work
• I can send text messages for free (ones that won't count towards my monthly amount of texts I'm allowed under my plan), so this essentially gives me one and a half to two times the amount of texts I get per month, because a lot of my texting is done while I'm at home in my room because I don't get that great of reception there either
• Cheap international calls if I ever need them (would have been nice for when Amanda was in Germany)
• Gives me further incentive to be logged into Google all the time and use their programs - although this has been a shift that's been happening anyway with Gmail, Blogger, Docs, Calendar and now Voice...all great programs that do what they need to do
• This phone number will stay with me no matter what - if I change cell phone numbers, or get a house phone, or get my own personal work phone number, I can add those as I want, but I'll always have my GV number and that's the main number other people need to know to get in contact with me

Things I don't like:

• The hassle that comes with a new phone number and having to give it out to everyone (but don't get me wrong, I'm sooo happy with my new phone number)
• The even bigger hassle of having to explain to people that this is a new number but it's not replacing my cell phone number, and that they need to put my GV number in as their main number but keep my cell phone number as a secondary number so that when I call/text them from my cell phone, I will still show up on their caller ID
• The fact that nobody is sure what will happen in the future with GV - it's almost all free, and because of this there's not much revenue for Google, so they'll need to find ways to make money off of this. Some speculate that they could charge for phone calls made through GV, but most people are speculating that they'll be including targeted ads in at some point in the future instead

But yeah, if you can't tell, I'm wicked excited about Google Voice, and after playing around with it a ton for a day...so far so good.