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GrandCentral Reborn As Google Voice

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the probably-should-try-that-out-again dept.

Some anonymous person wrote in to say that Google has relaunched and rebranded GrandCentral as "Google Voice." The article says it will "revolutionize telephones. It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens." Sadly, the voicemail didn't integrate very nicely w/ my phone back in the day, so I guess I should give it a shot.

2 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Where does the paycheck come from? by Contusion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How does google plan to make money off of this? TFA mentions that they'll be transcribing voicemail to text in near real-time. Will they also be sifting those voicemails for marketing keywords? If my buddy calls to brag about his new car, will I be seeing BMW ads next time I log into gmail?

    *Pulling the tinfoil hat even lower over the brow now* Will Google Talk also have the ability to monitor calls made through their service for marketing info?
    Yeah, it sounds like a great service, but what's the cost in privacy?

  2. Re:Wish they would use ANI instead of CID by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ANI and VOIP don't play well together because the ANI (which is accurate) will point to the POP where the VOIP system connects to the POTS.... which may be very far from the VOIP user.

    But that ANI (is* accurate, in that it will lead you to the actual VOIP company that delivered the call to the POTS. From there, they have records that identify the actual source.

    So while ANI+VOIP isn't good for E911, it does work well for identifying telemarketers and suing their ass.