Google Voice, the good the bad and the ugly

It’s maybe the best development of Google in the last six months, google voice. It is a completely free app from Google and is quite amazing. A person need not use multiple phone numbers anymore as one number fits all. At least according to Google. This is the way it is supposed to work.

A Google voice user receives a free number in the US somewhere. That number can ring on any phone you choose. Office phone, home phone or cell phone. It can ring on all or none. You choose. Numbers that are clearly business oriented you will want to ring on your office phone and from your girlfriend or wife on your cell phone. Numbers from pests can go directly to your voice mail. Its great! Well maybe not so great. A person will need to spend time in his settings diverting the appropriate numbers to the appropriate places. A number that is a cold call will ring on all phones simultaneously. You can block calls that leave no Id and record numbers of new cold callers. You can also leave different messages for different phone devices. There have been reports that the last feature I mentioned does not work very well. It might be embarrassing to leave a message for your girlfriend and have that go to your wife or to some business contact.

The worst part of all this is that this service is not available outside the US for now. Which seems a little crazy. If anything it should be limited to only American lines which many people have outside the US anyway.

The only real way to understand the service is to use it extensively. This as I said cannot be done by many.