Google Voice Daily

Announcing Google Voice Daily (gvDaily)

Posted on August 2, 2009 by Bud Man

Today this site becomes Google Voice Daily, or gvDaily for short. The URL is gvDaily.com. See here for information about the author and contributors.

Our goal is for gvDaily to be the indispensable blog for news, opinion and speculation about Google Voice. gvDaily will have the latest news and information about Google Voice, including pointers to breaking news, rumors we learn of ourselves and from others, and of course opinion.

gvDaily will be informed by our unique perspective as authors of the upcoming Google Voice For Dummies, to be published in November, and early users of GrandCentral and Google Voice itself. Also by many years of experience in technology, including work for Apple, IBM and Microsoft, service at AltaVista when it was flying high and when Google was crushing it, writing the early PC telecommunications book On-Line with BitCom, and much more.

Along with beginning the book, we also founded this blog, as GetGoogleVoice, to support it. Now we think the blog deserves more of our attention, so are making a greater commitment of time and energy to it, and renaming it gvDaily.

We spotted the potential of Google Voice literally the day it was announced. The potential, that is, for Google Voice to serve as a new, useful tool that would make a difference in the daily lives of, potentially, millions of people. (And save them, potentially, many millions of dollars.) As experienced authors, we were able to quickly get Wiley enthused about the idea of doing a book. Our support from them has been tremendous.

More recently, things started to get a little strange. Over the last few weeks we were excited by the rollout of third party dialers for Google Voice on several platforms, particularly the iPhone. We were even more thrilled by Google’s new Android and BlackBerry dialers, especially the thorough-going integration of Google Voice into Android. This seemed to us to be “the way forward”, as the Brits put it. We hoped the “first-party” iPhone app from Google would be as close to the Android dialer as possible.

Then, this past week, things truly went nuts. Apple not only rejected Google’s app but – the true sin, in our mind – squashed the already-approved apps GV Mobile, VoiceCentral and gvDialer. Big companies who treat their developers this way usually pay a price, sooner or later. Apple, after many months of complaints about its handling of the App Store, started to pay that price. News and critical opinion exploded, and a few influential users and developers deserted the iPhone, largely for Android.

On Friday, the other shoe dropped. The Federal Communications Commission wrote three letters, one each to Apple, AT&T and Google (see next story, above). The letters ask for details on the Google Voice apps decision and on how the App Store works, on AT&T’s influence on the App Store, and on how the Android Market works, respectively.

From here on, events – legal and political as well as business and technical – will be very hard to keep track of. You may find yourself wondering – we hope on a daily basis, or nearly so – what’s happening with Google Voice, and what does it all mean?

Not only will events proliferate, the broad trends are important. No one involved in computing or communications can ignore Google Voice any longer. It’s not only a breakthrough technology in its own right, it’s a canary in several different coal mines. Google Voice is both buffeted by, and benefiting from, many of the most important trends affecting all of technology today.

There’s clearly a need for a single source of information and opinion on Google Voice, a clearinghouse run by people whose only interest is in seeing Google Voice meet the greatest range of needs for the greatest number of people possible; a source without financial or personal ties to any of the principals.

gvDaily is that source. We are uniquely well-informed, having delved deeply into first GrandCentral and now Google Voice very early, so as to be able to write about this crucial technology for a general audience. And we’re uniquely well-placed to follow all the trends affecting Google Voice, and to let you know how they’ll affect you – now and in the future.

Follow the action along with us; we can all root for ourselves, as consumers and business decision-makers, to be the winners.

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Apple just says no to Google, Google Voice apps

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Bud Man

iPhone users seem to have been the biggest fans of Google Voice so far. But on Tuesday Apple took a big step back from Google Voice. They made two big moves:

Apple rejected the Google Voice dialer app from Google, keeping it from the App Store. Google has not indicated that they will make it available for the minority of iPhones that are pwned (“jailbroken”), so all iPhone users are deprived of the app.
Apple pulled the three Google Voice apps that were already on the App Store: GV Mobile, VoiceCentral and GVdialer. (The last one, GVdialer, has somehow contrived to be both multi-platform and little-known; press reports regularly cite two, not three, Google Voice dialers for iPhone.)

There is now a nearly perfect Google app for Android (about 1M users) and a very good Google ap for BlackBerry (about 30M users); both are free. There is now no Google Voice app from Google nor from third parties. The only option for iPhone users (about 40M) is to use the Google Voice mobile Web site or to call their voice mailbox to place calls, neither of which is nearly as good an option.

Who are the winners and losers from these moves? I think the three winners are:

Google Voice. Yes, Google Voice adoption will be slowed, and usage lessened, on the iPhone for now. But Google can improve the mobile Web site, as they’ve done for Gmail. More importantly, the publicity and the reflection on GV’s importance from Apple’s move are invaluable. Every player in the cell phone world, and every user, has to take Google Voice into account in their plans from here. As any salesperson knows, consideration is a prerequisite for adoption.
BlackBerry. BlackBerry is a good choice vs. the iPhone today, and expected to improve further, with new touchscreen models rumored to be on the way. Having an edge with Google Voice helps both in pure usefulness and also in the “cool factor” that has recently eluded RIM. BlackBerry will also benefit from IT departments perhaps being more willing to allow or even encourage Google Voice usage, now that its money-saving capabilities have been so dramatically highlighted.
Android. Android may now have its raison d’etre; BlackBerry led the way with e-mail, the iPhone with mobile Web browsing, and now people may come to see Android’s leading feature as Google Voice integration. Google’s more open approach to application developers becomes a bigger plus as well.

There are also three big losers:

Apple. Apple has given itself a big black eye. Rejecting the Google app hurts customers and Google, but pulling the three third-party apps that had previously been approved is particularly cruel and unfair. It hurts customers who had paid money as well as all iPhone users, who were potential future customers. The move also shines a harsh light on Apple’s tight and less than entirely ept management of the App Store, which is now less of an asset for Apple, and for iPhone users, than it had been.
AT&T. AT&T is widely blamed for Apple’s move, seen as protecting its lucrative text message plans and expensive overseas calls by iPhone users and trying to head off the development of Google Voice as a competing platform. Of course, many iPhone users already more or less disliked AT&T; a shift to more intense dislike or actual hatred may not make much short-term difference.
Google. The plus for Android doesn’t entirely offset pain elsewhere. The Apple/Google partnership that had so benefited both companies is now seriously strained. Many directions of possible growth for both companies are impaired by Apple’s bigfooting Google on an important emerging service.

What’s next? I think Apple may have to back down on GV Mobile, Voice Central and GVdialer. The move is just too Big Brother-esque in its effect on developers and users. As such, it damages three of Apple’s four key brand(s) – the App Store, iPhone and Apple itself – too much.

I doubt Apple will change tack on the Google app for GV as it’s just too good, being, official, highly functional, and free. Also, no one’s going to feel too sorry for Google in being rejected. But the third-party developers whose apps were pulled after the fact are just innocent victims. Companies that treat partners so badly, so publicly, lose a great deal by doing so. Apple may well try to recoup some of the damage by reversing itself. A logical time to do this is whenever AT&T loses its exclusivity on iPhone, thus neatly shifting the blame.

If it wasn’t before, Google Voice is now shown to be a crucial factor in decision-making for cell phone users, big buyers such as IT departments, and competitors. The resulting competitive pressure is likely to help all phone users, and in particular Google Voice users, for years to come.

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Google Voice gets real

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Bud Man

Google Voice is finally broadly available, and Google is taking it forward with new dialer apps that make it much easier to use. Two highlights:

Broadly available. According to Twitter traffic, personal experience and published reports, Google has finally sent invites to just about all the people who requested a number. Next step, according to David Pogue at the New York Times: Google Voice users each get a few invites to send to friends.
Two new dialers. Google has unleashed dialers for BlackBerry and Android that show the Google Voice number as the number the call is coming from (!). The BlackBerry dialer is a separate app, so you have to call from within it. You can’t call out on Google Voice from your address book, for instance. But the Android dialer, if you so choose, takes over your phone; contacts, native text messaging and everything else shows as from and to your Google Voice number. (The phone’s native number still works.)

Of course, there’s another shoe still to drop. Everyone is waiting, of course, for the iPhone dialer. Will it be as extensive as the Android one? Will AT&T allow it to be? The iPhone version is said to be “in the works”, leaving everyone who follows Google Voice on tenterhooks.

Why is this so important? iPhone has 35 million users, whereas Android is still around a million. BlackBerry has about 30 million users, but many BlackBerry users are corporate employees whose phones are tied into corporate e-mail and phone services; as such, they will be non-users or part-time GV users for a long time to come. For now, iPhone is the prize. Google Voice is already very popular on iPhone, and if it’s going to be wildly successful in these early days, it needs an excellent iPhone user experience.

This will no doubt come eventually; AT&T won’t have an iPhone exclusive forever. Apple itself may have conflicting interests here, though. iPhone users tend to view the carrier as just a barely competent pipe provider for their love affair with their iPhones; Google Voice users tend to view the carrier as just a barely competent pipe provider for their relationship with Google Voice. Does anyone else see a potential conflict looming?

The puzzle pieces that are falling into place so far, though, are all positive. An Android-type dialer for the iPhone and inboud number portability – letting you move yur current cell phone number to Google Voice – are the big remaining question marks.

News and resources for Google Voice:

David Pogue has a comprehensive update in today’s New York Times. He makes a good point about losing free in-network call minutes if your calls go through Google Voice.
If the new Google Voice dialer makes you want to take another look at Android, here’s a good Android/iPhone comparison and list of hot early Android apps, a couple of which are telephony-related. (Most of the others have to do with GPS.)
The best starting point for all of Google Voice’s features remains Google’s features page.

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A good brief GV analysis

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Bud Man

Here is a good brief analysis of Google Voice’s likely impact on the existing telecomms industry. It describes how a raft of companies that had recently begun to get traction selling “point of presence” applications are threatened.

Key quote:

“How will companies formerly selling point of presence applications survive, when you can get 95% of the features they offer, for 100% less cost?”

The article points out that some burden shifts to users:

“…while end-users will have to suffer minor learning curves and possible feature shortages in the early versions, we all can see with our own eyes that Google has created a great SaaS platform…”

Then points to some of the people who’d better watch out:

“While other firms like Vonnage, Skype and a host of others have tip-toed into that space, none had the market clout, devoted developer base, and the goodwill of so much open architecture to drive market penetration at such a rocket-like rate which Google can muster.
I would not want to be an application software developer in the way of this speeding train… so you better find a way to get on it before it runs you over!”

We’re all curious to see if market penetration really goes at a rocket-like rate!

By comparison, it took Gmail four years to get to 50 million users – and it’s now rocketed upward to 100 million in just the last year. Google Voice requires more of a change in people’s habits than Gmail does, but then, the benefits - most eye-catching, the huge savings on international calls, especially compared to calls made directly from a mobile - are more compelling too.

My own guess is that the numbers will be lower – I see it as unlikely that Google Voice will have more than 100 million users in five years – but still impressive. Adding a million users a year for five years, with disproportionate impact among US smartphone users (including perhaps the majority of US journalists, bloggers and other trend-setters), would be enough for Google Voice to be off to a very good start indeed.

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Google Voice beta expands!

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Bud Man

Google has started sending out invitations to Google Voice to people beyond the long-time GrandCentral user base. People who requested an invitation from Google are gradually receiving them.

Google also started warning GrandCentral users who haven’t made the move yet that it’s about time to upgrade. (The harsh expression we used in Silicon Valley back in the day was “get on the train or die”.)

GrandCentral founder and Google Voice product manager Craig Walker tweets that it will take “a little bit” to work through the backlog of requests, but at least the process has started.

However, there’s a subtle dilemma here for those who want to do more than just experiment with Google Voice. If you join today, you’ll be given a chance to choose a new number. The Google Voice sign-up process even helps you enter words and see if any available phone numbers match them.

But if you wait you may get a chance to start your time on Google Voice by porting an existing number, such as your cell phone number, to Google Voice. (This is called “inbound phone number portability”.) You may have to pay a penalty to your service provider, and you’ll have to get a new number for your actual cell phone to run on. But you won’t have to re-educate all the people who have your cell phone number to use your Google Voice number instead.

Or, I should say, try to re-educate them. Many people will “not get the memo” and keep calling your cell phone directly. And regardless, you still have to educate people who have your home phone number, and potentially your work phone number as well, to use your new Google Voice number instead.

Google Voice will save some of us so much money on long-distance calls, especially if you make them from a cell phone, that there’s no choice; you need to start using Google Voice as soon as possible. For the rest of us, though, it’s a dilemma. Will you stay on your current setup until you can use inbound phone number portability – or will you go to Google Voice right away?

PS Thanks to Paul for the correction to Craig Walker’s title and role.

Posted in Features | 2 Comments

Google Voice: Make my (To)day!

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Bud Man

Janet Shamlian with Craig Walker: "I'm ready to turn three phones into one"

Janet Shamlian says "I'm ready to turn three phones into one" to Craig Walker

Even in this age when media attention is fragmented – and the old Big 3 networks and newspapers are suffering – there are still a few iconic spots where any company would love to see their product appear. Google Voice has already hit a home run with David Pogue of the New York Times and lit up the blogosphere. Today it’s received favorable notices on the iconic Today show.

In the three-minute segment, Matt Lauer introduces Google Voice as “a single way that you can be reached”. Reporter Janet Shamlian describes Google Voice as a “huge convenience.”

She describes her two months of experience using Google Voice to juggle her busy schedule as an NBC News reporter and the mother of five children. Only a few of Google Voice’s top features get mentioned – cheap calls, custom voicemail message and spam filtering are shown. Google Voice is compared favorably to Google Search.

Grand Central founder Craig Walker gets a precious 10 seconds on-camera with the reporter to describe Google Voice as putting people back in control. The overall impression is that Google Voice simplifies her life and helps her with work and, perhaps more importantly, with family.

The segment raises privacy concerns about having all your voice messages go through one central service, but in the end Janet gives Google Voice a big thumbs up.

Our take: Google Voice was probably already bound to be a hit with the early adopters out there – and, eventually, with “the rest of us” as well. Favorable reports like on Today may help create a bit of a feeding frenzy when the service finally launches, with people who usually wait for a technology to prove itself rushing in to be among the first to get Google Voice.

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Google Voice in the news

Posted on June 13, 2009 by Bud Man

When we named this blog Get Google Voice, we never thought it would take so long before people could, well, get Google Voice!

As of today, the service is still limited to people upgrading from GrandCentral – see the previous entry below – and a few lucky stiffs who have gotten invites to the beta program.

It seems Google has been giving out a few more beta invites, because a couple new stories appeared today that are worth a look.

The first was a brief update from Mobile Tech Manor – sounds like a play on Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor in Byte, back in the day. Anyway, there was just one paragraph on Google Voice, but it was a good one:

“Picking up the Pre insured that phones were on my mind all week as it made for the fourth smartphone I have. I got into the Google Voice beta program and so far it has worked flawlessly for me. I no longer worry about missing phone calls or text messages that might be sent to one of the phones I’m not using at that moment. Google Voice gets hold of me no matter which of the four phones I’m carrying. I especially like how calls get announced on the phone; the caller announces themselves to me so I can decide whether to answer or not. It’s a great service so far.”

Google Voice does a lot, but this is a good summary of why it’s going to be worthwhile for so many people. Read more from Mobile Tech Manor here.

In a similar vein, there’s a useful video clip showing off Google Voice as well, from 33 TV in Dallas-Fort Worth. It’s only two and a half minutes long and sums things up pretty well.

Check it out and keep the faith – Google Voice has to be made available to “the rest of us” soon!

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GC2GV: B4

Posted on May 23, 2009 by Bud Man

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May you be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead – Irish toast

You may be wondering whether to make the move from GrandCentral to Google Voice. The simple answer is, do it!

The #1 thing you’ll get is cheap international calls from your cell phone – with Google standing behind it. And you’ll get SMS support, voicemail message transcripts and conference calls.

But before you make the change, there’s a few things you should be ready for:

Your Contacts won’t automatically come over into Google Voice;
You can export your Contacts into Google Voice;
You can’t export customized greetings, phone settings and group settings.
Your Messages won’t come over into Google Voice;
You can’t export your Messages into Google Voice.

So before you move over, do the following:

Save or delete all your GrandCentral messages. (Access to them may stop suddenly someday, so dealing with them fully now is the only safe approach.)
Export your GrandCentral address book. Sign into GrandCentral; click the Address Book tab and click Export - choose CSV file; save the file to your desktop, or someplace else appropriate.

That’s it! You’re prepared. In the next post, I’ll describe how to get Google Voice set up quickly and easily.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Is Google Voice VoIP?

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Bud Man

Voice over IP – VoIP, as it’s properly abbreviated, though you’ll see voip-megaphone2 VOIP a lot – is the future of phones.

Basically, VoIP means using the Internet – based on Internet Protocol, or IP – to carry phone calls.

Traditional phone networks use special circuits to protect voice traffic and maintain voice quality and reliability. They have, of course, evolved over the years – there are no more switchboard operators plugging wires into and out of sockets to connect calls, as there used to be! (As often seen in movies, most recently in Changeling with Angelina Jolie as an operator and supervisor; her free long-distance phone access plays a minor role in the plot.)

Internet Protocol is a simple set of rules for sending data over possibly unreliable connections – such as the phone network, which is unreliable for non-voice data as it wasn’t designed for it! In IP, data is divided up into chunks – “packetized” – sent over the line (or carrier pigeons or whatever), then re-assembled at the other end.

You can see that this takes time and would tend to introduce lags to digitize, send and re-assemble the packets. But, with use increasing and investments in infrastructure growing, the Internet is getting so much better and more reliable that it can reasonably be used to carry voice calls – thus, VoIP.

However – and we are still researching this – Google Voice is apparently a call redirection service rather than “true” VoIP. It uses phone lines to send analog voice signals, rather than IP packets, from one point to the next.

This is a bit disappointing to VoIP zealots but welcome to the rest of us, who should get better call quality as a result.

However, we’re still awaiting a detailed explanation of just how Google Voice works – and waiting for it to be available beyond the GrandCentral community and a few reviewers, as well!

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Dialing International: Who Needs Mobile Minutes?

Posted on April 24, 2009 by chrisdannen

An editorial in the VOIP News this week postulated that Google Voice might be in the position to eliminate overseas cell phone calling once the service is launched this spring. Why? Because GV does two things that neither Skype nor mobile phones can do by themselves: with a Google Voice dialer on your smartphone, you can dial out of the country cheaply, and you can do it without a computer.

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The article describes how the smartphone-based GV dialers work:

Users typically choose a name from the built-in address book, or dial manually. The dialer first instructs the handset to dial a VoIP gateway, then tells the gateway what number to call. It makes VoIP dialing as easy as regular cellular calling. Users pay for cellular airtime plus the cheap VoIP rates if the call is international.

In other words, Google Voice will be able to “spoof” the people you call into thinking that your mobile phone is using your Google Voice phone number. That means that when they call you back, they won’t try to use your real mobile number–that’d cause confusion. The whole process will stay within GV service, which like Skype will charge pennies on the dollar for overseas calls. All you’ll need is your 3G data connection or WiFi.

Of course, there’s a complication: the only dialers available right now, GVMobile and VoiceCentral, are for iPhone only. But more are coming, and for other platforms as well. (Some kind of baked-in functionality for Google Android phones seems like a logical next step, too.)

And with new radio spectrum opening up for all kinds of uses–including mobile broadband–there’s no telling where the service could go from there. If Google executes its Voice strategy to its logical end, they could end up with both a smartphone and a service that don’t rely on the big four domestic carriers at all. That would mean no more 2-year cell contracts or $100-a-month service plans.

And wouldn’t that be nice?