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

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).