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Google Purchases GrandCentral Web Phone Service
Nrbelex writes "Bloomberg News via the New York Times is reporting that Google has purchased GrandCentral. 'Google said yesterday that it had bought GrandCentral Communications, acquiring a service that lets people use a single number for all their phones ... GrandCentral users can create a single mailbox, accessible over the Internet, for all their phone messages, Google said on its Web site ... GrandCentral, based in Fremont, Calif., was founded in 2005 by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, two executives who worked for Dialpad Communications, a Web phone company that was acquired by Yahoo in 2005.'"
AT&T could have done well, if they'd just cared about the customer.
Long ago, my mother always chose AT&T when getting a phone turned on. They were our first wireless carrier, and we were happy.
Then they apparently quit caring. We had numerous problems with both long distance and cellular phone service. Some issues carried on for months before being resolved. My mother eventually swore she'd never use them again for anything. Ever.
It wasn't the issues, it was the way they resolved them. Everyone expects occasional issues with service. (Except overbilling, which was a few of the issues.) But if the company makes fixing the issue into an issue itself, it's obvious that they don't care about the customer at all.
They managed to turn one of their best customers into a dedicated non-customer.
T-Mobile has been a good provider, but if it had been anyone other than AT&T prodiving service for the iPhone, I'd own one right now, despite the contract my mother got us into. They were my sole reason not to get one.
Anyhow, the point is that the old movies would have been correct, if AT&T hadn't gotten stupid. Can Google take that position? They are pretty amazing on the web, but we'll see how it goes with a telco. I was reading their FAQ and apparently it used to be possible to assign your own ringer on GC, but now you can only choose from a set of approved ones. I can't prove this was a Google change, but it sounds like it. If they get crazy with the changes, they could destroy this service before they even really get started with it.
(I have not used GC yet, as I had not heard of it until now, and there appears to be no more numbers available for the moment.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Hello, Well it looks like Grand Central built a bit of its service on FreeDigits.com phone numbers. Did the due diligence at Google know this? Hmmm... Our virtual business world opens a pandoras box of unusual possibilities.
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
They just pulled custom MP3 files for "ring tones". I guess it was just a Google-Prep...
Oh gods I hope so.
Right now I have two options: Crappy Verizon DSL that blocks ports and Comcast that charges an arm and a leg for mediocre service, bad tech support and even worse on-site support. (Search my blog for Comcast to read my horror stories.)
If Google (or, really, any other company) offered service in my area that was cheaper and/or better, I'd switch in a heartbeat. And I wouldn't doubt for a second that they could offer it, except that my state government is in the pocket of both Verizon and Comcast.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
1 - Reliability - the week I signed up and started using the service, most of the calls did not in fact go through - calls would go to silence or ring forever
2 - Capability - While the idea of rules based call routing is nice, implementation is very rudamentary - I really wish it was a lot more capable.- Of course this is fixable, esp with Google's backing.
3 - Security - Using caller ID as means of verifying identity - no matter how convenient, is laughable. As an experiment I tried to "hack" into my own voice mail from my office line (it was set up to only work for my cell phone) Took me about 5 minutes (most spent figuring out how to spoof a number. Can repeat in under a minute) - Yes you need to know someone's cell number for this, but its not a huge secret for most people. I don't expect recent ruling that makes spoofing caller ID to fix this either
4 - Return Caller-ID - Unless you use a convoluted method for dialing out, the person you call will get your real number's caller ID - so they are much more likely to call back THAT number than your GC number. Its convoluted, but GC number is supposed to solve the 20 different phone numbers problem, but actually it just makes it a 21 number problem
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Disclosure: My father worked for AT&T->Ameritech->SBC->AT&T for 30 years and my grandfather for 20 years before that. I got to hear about them for most of my childhood. Hence my opinions of the company are significantly colored by his experiences but I think I understand the company fairly well.
To understand AT&T (note I didn't say accept or like) you have to understand that their corporate culture is that of a government sanctioned utility. For years AT&T was the only game in town until the early 1980s when the company was broken up. But there still was no competition, simply smaller regional versions of the same company and the company culture didn't change one bit. The company still thinks like a monopoly utility and behaves like one. Hence, their customer service tends to be crap because they are under the (often correct) opinion that you have little/no alternatives.
There are dedicated individuals working at AT&T to be sure but there are far too many stereotypical union paycheck collectors who don't give a damn. I've met more than a few personally and professionally. Your chances of interacting with one of these slackers is relatively high unfortunately.
I had the opportunity to sit in a meeting recently with Ed Whitacre, the outgoing CEO of AT&T. He was talking about strategy and some opinions about issues of the day including net neutrality, video services, bundled services, and a few others. Basically I came away thinking he was disingenuous and arrogant wrapped in an "aw shucks" good old boy routine. His opinions on the topics mentioned would set off a flame war here on slashdot. He spun weaknesses of their services (such as the smaller bandwidth for their video services versus cable) as if they were somehow what people wanted. He acted as if Google and every other web service were getting a better deal than they deserved. He didn't give a crap about the customer, he simply cares about the bottom line for AT&T. Not shocking to be sure but I expected the CEO to be at least a little less obvious about their contempt for their customers.
I have been using Grand Central for a while and I have been dreaming about this. Google and Grand Central seem like a good match...as long as they stop taking away functionality and start adding more (like gmail voice mail integration). It didn't bother me to much when they started announcing to my callers that I was recording their call (I was expecting it) but taking away my custom mp3 rings. For shame. Seriously though, I enjoy the features in Grand Central so much I was actually considering paying for them when they went out of beta. Now that Google bought them though..Beta Forever Baby!!
Right up until the Google purchase, GrandCentral would allow people to customize their "RingShare" ringback tones in a way that was, I think, unique and unprecedented: You could upload your own MP3s and have GrandCentral play them to callers while your number was ringing.
This was a lot of fun. At a website called Telephone World, I found a great recording of a phone call made through an old Western Electric switch and edited it down to an "old school" ringback signal to use on GrandCentral.
It lasted less than a week for me. Apparently, part of the Google deal was removing the custom MP3 feature. Now there is just a lame "library" of pre-selected ringback tones. Google, RIAA, thanks for nothing.