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Google Voice Opens To All

Posted by kdawson on from the is-this-the-party-to-whom-i-am-speaking dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google Voice is now open to anyone in the US, removing the need to search for an invite. At the Google Voice site, anyone with a US IP address and a US phone number can sign up for an account. Non-US IPs are blocked, and non-US-based phone numbers are prevented from attaching to Google Voice (with the single odd exception of the 403 area code of southern Alberta)." Good timing on the part of Frontier Communications Corp., which just filed a lawsuit claiming that the Google Voice feature connecting a user's home, work, and cell phone numbers to another number infringes one of their patents.

4 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. WTF by linhares · · Score: 5, Insightful

    since when US=ALL?

    1. Re:WTF by 7213 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Roughly, the end of WWII. Or if you're lazy, we'll just call it 1950.

    2. Re:WTF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      1) Slashdot has a significant number of users from other countries.
      2) Google is a multi-national corporation that provides most of its services to any country with Internet access that hasn't explicitly blocked them. The UK NHS isn't.

    3. Re:WTF by Pootie+Tang · · Score: 5, Informative

      /. FAQ: http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml#ed850

      Slashdot seems to be very U.S.-centric. Do you have any plans to be more international in your scope?

      Slashdot is U.S.-centric. We readily admit this, and really don't see it as a problem. Slashdot is run by Americans, after all, and the vast majority of our readership is in the U.S. We're certainly not opposed to doing more international stories, but we don't have any formal plans for making that happen. All we can really tell you is that if you're outside the U.S. and you have news, submit it, and if it looks interesting, we'll post it.

      It is worth noting that there is a Japanese Slashdot run by VA Japan. While we helped them a little in their early days, they essentially run their own content without any real involvement from us... none of us can read Kanji! There are currently no plans to do other language or nation specific Slashdot sites.