Google Voice Now Gives Priority to Students

theodp writes "Holy Logan's Run, Batman! Google on Friday began giving students priority access to its Google Voice service, which has remained in a closed beta since its transition from GrandCentral in March of last year. Typically, invites for the service can take anywhere from a few hours to several months to arrive after a user signs up. But Google is now promising students who cough up an .edu e-mail address access to the service within 24 hours. Good thing CMU closes e-mail accounts after graduation, or old fuddy-duddy alums like Brian Reid might try to sneak in!"

Comments

Outside of USA

[ProfMobius]

But Google is now promising students who cough up an .edu e-mail address access to the service within 24 hours.

So much for all the students around the world who don't have email addresses ending in .edu

Well, i guess it is time to check if no-ip.com has hosts ending in .edu and set-up a home mail server :)

Re:Outside of USA

[mrrockford]

From my Google Voice acct: "Note that Google Voice is only available for sign up in the US"

Re:News?

[RabbitWho]

Everything Google does is news-worthy.

World is not US of A

[i ate my neighbour]

My university's domain doesn't end with .edu you insensitive clod!

Re:World is not US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that they're restricting it to .edu is because Google Voice is only available in the US for everyone. I mean, it still holds that the world isn't the USA, but if Google Voice is only available in the US, then it makes sense to use .edu. Google Voice happens to be a bit of an odd one when it comes to Google's services because voice services and the regulations that go along with them very from country to country - vs. the internet which is mostly unregulated and the same resource in most locations.

Re:World is not US of A

[i ate my neighbour]

My previous one was .edu.tr, now just .nl, so I'm out of luck.

Re:World is not US of A

[RabbitWho]

Mine ended in .ie My friends ends in .cz studentnumber@gmit.ie (GMIT university Ireland) name@mail.muni.cz (Masaryk university Czech Republic) It's really not guessable.. but as someone said if goggle voice is only available in America anyway it doesn't matter.

Re:World is not US of A

[Florian Weimer]

Except that .EDU is open to educational institutions worldwide.

Re:World is not US of A

[belrick]

The reason that they're restricting it to .edu is because Google Voice is only available in the US for everyone.

There are Canadian Universities that have .edu domains - the University of Toronto has both utoronto.ca and toronto.edu.

It's actually been quite reliable...

[IANAAC]

I've been using GV (and before that GC) for a bit over a year, and it's been pretty reliable. then again, I only have used it for voicemail. I don't use it for SMS or making calls. Making calls through it just seems convoluted and unnecessary.

Re:It's actually been quite reliable...

[vipz]

I use it for international calling on my cellphone. Paying only a couple cents vs. a few dollars a minute that I assume all US mobile carriers are charging.

the first one's always free

[FuckingNickName]

I guess it's like Facebook: target the young crowds, who then grow up thinking privacy policies unimportant when they enter the workplace.

Re:the first one's always free

[Albanach]

Actually, I'd rather Google's privacy policy for Voice http://www.google.com/googlevoice/privacy-policy.html over Facebook's privacy policy any day of the week.

How is this not?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the biggest IT companies in existance practically introduces a new service (Yeah, it existed before but was pretty unpractical due to those long registering times) for students (A huge amount of us students read this site, you know...)... How is this not exactly the type of news that SlashDot is for? Besides, it is not as if today would have been extraordinarily busy news day or anything. If you don't find it interesting, why waste your time with commenting? Not that you would have spent a lot of time for that as you didn't really write any arguments or such... Yeah. I'm getting pretty annoyed to people karmawhoring with the "How is this news worthy?" comment which you can find on practically every article on SlashDot. I would think of it as a running joke if those wouldn't get flagged +5 insightful pretty much every time.

Aaaaaanyways. Yeah, its nice that google does that. I would have hoped for something more sophisticated than just checking for .edu addresses, though. Not all students receive such (well, at least not outside USA. I don't know if all universities there use the .edu domain).

Re:Gives Priority to _American_ Students

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Voice is currently an _American_ service. The phone #s are only available in the USA. So even if they did give you an account, it's not like you'd be able todo much with it down under

Re:Gives Priority to _American_ Students

[Dishevel]

Typical. I have to say that if you are any indication that the state of education in the world as a whole is no better than here in the US. If you had any ability to understand simple concepts you would know that Google Voice is only available in the US. This is not because Google loves the US and hates crappy foreign countries. This is because they only have US numbers to hand out. If Google for instance gave you a US number you would then rack up massive LD bills and whine on /. how deceptive they were.

Way to go. In one sentence you were able to throw out some good US hate and prove that you are ignorant of the basic facts in the case. Good job.

Re:News?

[pclminion]

Well, I'm not sure, but I'm glad I followed that last link and learned that Google is a motherfucking slimeball who fired somebody for being too old and not staying at work past 7 PM on a regular basis.

If you lose respect for experience, and respect for a work-life balance, your company becomes a ball of pure evil and incompetence. I'm actually completely shocked.