I just saved a bunch of money by switching to… Google?
By Solomon Kleinsmith | Related entries in NewsIf you’ve got stock in any company that sells long distance service I would seriously recommend that you sell it immediately. It may take a while to get around that people can get unlimited calls to anywhere in the U.S. for free from your home phone, but this baby is sure to catch on fast.
Google Voice is the latest release from Google Labs, the boys and girls who brought us Gmail, Google Talk and Google Docs. I use these services every day and have been waiting for my invite to try out Google Voice for months. There are so many features that may be useful to you, but I’ll detail the cost cutting ones here.
As far as outgoing calls, the way Google Voice works is you tell it what number to call and tell it to connect you to that number through one of your own phones. Google Voice then calls you and connects you to that number. This may not seem like a big deal, unless you happen to be one of the millions of people who have unlimited incoming call plans, or unlimited calls from numbers in your ‘circle’. As of writing this I have read that Sprint, Alltel, US Cellular and Verizon all have such plans.
Similarly, those with Google Voice that still use landlines are able to call anywhere in the U.S. for free, since they will technically be getting incoming call to connect with whoever they would like to call long distance. For those who have broadband bundle deals, you know that local service has become more of a commodity than anything else, being basically free between your cable and broadband bills. Another way it saves money, if you don’t have unlimited incoming calls, but do have landlines you are nearby for parts of the day, is when people call you you can have Google Voice forward the call to any phone you like. Meaning, for example, that if you’re going to be at your desk at work between 9am and 4pm, you can set it so the calls will be forwarded there so you don’t eat up minutes on your cell.
Other potentially useful features are recording calls, automatic transcription of voice mail into emails and free text messaging. If this is enough for you to want to jump on the Gtrain, then run on over to Google Voice and request an invite. They have been rolling invitations out to early adopter types who signed up months ago, but have been opening the floodgates faster and faster lately.
As for me, I’m going to attempt to text message my girlfriend, who is visiting her folks… overseas.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:44 am
Apparently she hasn’t gotten my text yet… I know you all were waiting on the edge of your seat for that one, haha.
July 16th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Does the politics in the post ever end?
July 16th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
That’s massively useful and cool. Everyone loves screwing over the phone company! I have friends who’ve used Skype for a while, especially for overseas calling.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
… until the advertising kicks in.
Because, eventually, it will. Maybe you’ll sit through a 30-second spot before your call begins, or every 15 minutes, your call will be interrupted by a 10-second spot.
That’s not “if”… that’s “when.”
Yeah, I’m an old skeptic…
July 16th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Dear Dr. Kleinsmith, I still have a land line that I pay MCI $55 a month for (I keep the ringer off so I don’t have to answer the telemarketing calls) because 1. on September 11, 2001 there was no cell phone service for several hours and 2. sometimes having a 718 area code is helpful…
Am I crazy, doc?
Nancy
PS — love your posts!!!
July 16th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
You sound like my girlfriend :)
I tend to not always spell out what I see as the obvious. In this case I thought it better to just say what the deal was and let you all consider the ramifications in telecommunications and politics, until I reread it today and thought otherwise.
Personally, I’m going to start producing ‘original content’ for this site, meaning reporting that isn’t merely commenting on other people’s reporting. I’ll be using Google Voice to record interviews to a central location I can access from wherever I am. I’ll also be using it to make calls to local independents, when I do some local polling as advance market research of sorts to give a few of us indies in the Omaha area a better idea of how we should structure a grassroots group for independents and moderates.
And thanks Nancy :)
Crazy? Nah… but I would comment that you do get a number for your Google Voice account for whatever area code you want, and you could cut your land line and cell bill by routing some of your calls through Google Voice, on top of adding some features that may be useful to you.
Regarding ads… I seriously doubt they’ll put ads in the phone calls ever. The whole Google paradigm has been doing what others do… better. I actually don’t like their search engine much (I like Yahoo and Bing much more) but Gmail and Google Docs are fantastic. They know that, if they made a product that was significantly worse than that of others, like it would be if there were audio ads in the phone calls, there would be zero reason for people to use their service over other services.
No… my guess is they’ll make their money by having contextual ads off to the right of the home screen, that get their context from the contents of the automatically transcribed voice mail. This is exactly how they make money from Gmail. If you notice… everything they do is about exposing people to their contextual ads in new ways… or offering things that cost them nearly nothing (like Google Docs), but cost their competition money and get people attached to the Google brand and cloud computing, which they dominate.