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Google Voice VoIP Calls Will Be Live For Everyone by Next Week (androidpolice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google took a long, long break from Google Voice a while back. After letting the app fall into disrepair, Google expressed a renewed commitment to Voice in 2017. It has since announced a handful of feature updates, including VoIP calling in 2018. However, that feature never actually rolled out to everyone. Google's Scott Johnston says it's almost time, though. We know that some Voice users got VoIP calling as far back as September. Like far too many Google features lately, this is a server-side change and not controlled by an app update. For some unknown reason, Google has dragged its feet rolling it out to everyone. According to Johnston, things are back on track and the VoIP calling feature will be live for all users by next week.If you're looking for another option besides Google Voice, check out alternatives.
Give me SIP service again!
I've had Google Voice since it was Grand Central, making and receiving calls with a SIP ATA on a normal desk phone. When they scuttled SIP, I used Asterisk PBX to bridge the gap via an XMPP extension. Now they've scuttled XMPP, and the remaining solution (aside from using Google Hangouts on a PC with a headset) is a hack which shares a single certificate ferreted out of an Obihai ATA. Google's current protocol actually IS SIP, but with funky headers and flags. It's been partly reverse-engineered by the community. Google literally went to extra trouble to make it incompatible with industry-standard IP telephony. I guess that was to try and make it an asset to attract people to their G+ ecosystem.
I want to connect my collection of SIP IP phones straight to Google again. Or, at least have an intermediary which signs on with my Google credentials on one side, and offers SIP service within my LAN. Even a Pidgin plugin would be nice - I'd just leave it running 24/7 and my phones could interface with it.
Some of you will remember anon.penet.fi, a free email anonymizer from the 1990's. I used it a few times back in the late 1990's because I was aware of the security and privacy risks of 'regular' email. That is, 'plain Jane' risks of snooping on personal conversations.
Today, in 2018, I google my real name, and up come some of those anonymized emails, of which no copy was supposed to have ever existed, much less been kept on some server for 20+ years.
They were benign emails, but... privacy. So, I guess I was right about that privacy thing.
Nothing ever goes away once it traverses the internet. And there is no such thing as free (as in beer).