Google Fi: Simple Until It's Not

An anonymous reader writes: When Google started Project Fi, one of their big goals was to make cell phone calling simple and predictable. By combining Wi-Fi calling with cellular networks and flat $10/GB pricing, they're trying to put together a service that "just works." But as Dieter Bohn writes, things can get a lot more complicated when you try to integrate it with other Google services, like Voice. He says, "Precisely what happens when you port your number from Voice to Fi (which are kind of the same thing — but not really!) is clear as mud. ... You won't lose your Google Voice number, and it will still do most of the stuff it did before, but you may have to wend your way back to the 2011-era Google Voice site to manage it. Your texts no longer forward via SMS but they're available in the Hangouts App. You can't call people from Google Voice on the web but you can from Hangouts. Oh, and on Android there's a Hangouts dialer app you can use, sometimes, just because."

Comments

This is because Google lost it's way

[Anonymous Coward]

It's flailing around, trying to find coherence and not finding it.

Use one model.
Use one service. (Fi should be an extension of VOICE...)
Monetize it, but don't do it the way you're currently doing it.
Quit lying to yourselves about you not being a telecom company. You became one with GV and buying up Gizmo5.

The biggest problem is that they want to have their cake and eat it too- and can't reconcile themselves to being a Common Carrier with all that this entails. And...it shows.

Pleasing everyone-never going to happen

[Falconnan]

First, this IS the testing phase. As long as Google is paying attention to weird interactions within their services, this will likely be ironed out. Second, if this is the biggest problem the service has so far, I submit that it really isn't that bad. Good to know, but not really a big deal to most. On the other hand, if Google wants to be successful in this space, they will need to get this worked out before Project Fi is a generally available thing. Otherwise they really are just flailing about (but artfully).

Re:It's simple for me!

[Shadow of Eternity]

If there's something we've established in the last year it's that a huge number of people writing tech/gaming/whatever blogs are doing it because they're too incompetent to work anywhere else and think they found someplace to push their agenda, not because they have any meaningful understanding of or appreciation for the field.