Up until about 2010 or so, they were absolutely legendary for their skillful execution of ideas - just the right interface, feature-set, and balance. Time and time again, everything they did they knocked out of the park.
And then, something changed.
Now they are changing what they did right by taking the dumbest moves over and over again - the ones that completely destroys their credibility and alienates their userbase.
Is there a single user anywhere who wants this? I really don't get it.
If google did a survey:
"Are you happy with google voice or would you rather have it in our wacky skype knockoff that you use with our goofy facebook clone?"
I'm trying to think of what it would look like if other companies decided to do a similar thing. It would be like if say, General Mills came out with a terrible wretched artificial sweetener and then decide to put it in every product they sell because well, it's their sweetener - of course they should completely dismantle all of their successful lines in the name of their incredibly unsuccessful one. Duh!
I really hope that they find the John-Scully's who are internally making all these retarded decisions and stop doing what they say - or else they're well on their way to being a has-been. Yet another great company that somehow put a bunch of ivy-league fortune-500 trainwreck-types in charge and then trusted them until it was too late.
In 1999 my friend called Google The next altavista. At this rate, he may be right.
- I've been using Voice for ages, with little to no improvement. This will bring lots of improvement, instead of me worrying about Voice like it's the next Reader. - I've also been using Plus for ages, so i don't have a fear it either.
I understand this Plus requirement is annoying to some, but i honestly don't get the resentment.
To me, Plus is google doing what they should have done with Wave. Made a product, and invested in it. As a company, integrating your products is not a bad thing, it's a good thing, imo. I'm sure many will scream "But not when your users hate your other product!" and.. well.. tough shit heh.
If it ends up being a terrible move then they'll pay for it and die out. But i don't think it's a wrong move for them to try.
As it is, Voice is a wasteland, and it actually getting some love and attention will be awesome. I'm looking forward to it.
I use a Google Voice number that is associated with a Gmail account that I do not use for any other purpose (Hangouts/Talk or otherwise). It doesn't even have a Google+ account associated with it.
It's nice to have single number that can ring all my lines.
If/when this is killed, what's the alternative?
(Article appears to be down/inaccessible for me).
It'll be more complicated, but I'm not terribly shocked I have to replace yet another Google service with an outside solution.
Hurry up Mailpile.is! Before I have to move out of Gmail!
I ported my old Voice number to voip.ms too.
I also have a Google Voice account, but the service is less reliable than Voip.ms, and I only use it to call a couple of family members who use Google Voice as their primary phone service.
It is a paid service, vs Voice which is free, but you may prefer the paid service depending on how badly the Hangouts integration goes.
The Google Voice team was rolled into the Hangouts team long ago. The only thing they haven't done is roll the Google Voice app's functionality into the Hangouts app.
It's really painful to see Telegram gaining popularity, when it has such glaring errors.
You should instead use OTR on Jabber (ChatSecure [3]), or TextSecure [4] (which now has an Internet delivery mechanism).
[0]: http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936539
[2]: http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand-bac...
[4]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri...
The monolithic Hangouts app suffers from a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades problem. It's pretty good at four things, but not great at any single one.
There are plenty of other voip/call forwarding services, but are there any that duplicate that functionality?
If they want to kill all the Voice features, then I'll be very disappointed.
http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns
(note google voice is the highest cancellation risk predicted)
IIRC Google Voice is due to remove API access for third-party apps.
1) Voice Mailbox - What Now?
2) My mobile phone number IS my Google Voice Number (Sprint)
3) Ring at multiple locations (Isn't valuable to me anymore)
4) The google.com/voice web page is a lifesaver for searching through my text, and voice mail. (Most Needed Function)
The issues you raise are all irrelevant, except for #4. They are not killing off Google Voice phone numbers or functionality. They are just rolling it into Hangouts.
I don't know what they are planning to do with their google.com/voice web property though.
I used to be able to talk to my Jabber frieds on both Android and Gmail/Web. They dropped federation on Android with the move to Hangouts, and -- unsurprisingly -- they're now doing the same for Gmail/Web as it's moving to Hangouts.
I'm eyeing TextSecure as a replacement IM tool. Sort of hoping the TextSecure desktop app comes around before the Gmail Hangout integration becomes mandatory; but as cool as TextSecure may be from a security perspective, they haven't exactly blown me away with the timeliness of their releases. ;)
Moving? Hasn't this been the case for the last two years?
It's still opt-in, at least for me.
I gotta say, while I can't really fault them for not releasing the software as quickly as I'd wish they did, I do think their communication could be a bit better. I still have no idea how, for instance, the CM integration works on either the user interface or the technical level. The inter-operability may be transparent; it certainly is oblique. ;)
Don't get me wrong, though, I like what they're doing and I'm looking forward to seeing more.
Also, I'm a Co-Founder here at SendHub. So if you have any questions on getting this to work please drop us a line. (ryan@sendhub.com)
I personally, would like to see some integration. But sometimes, Google just tries to G+-ify everything a bit too much. Ex: Latitude and YouYube comments.
Hopefully this will just be a nice seamless transition of the GV sms messaging into Hangouts. I could see that as useful.
I bought a jailbroken iPhone and have been just using a iPad sim card in it for the last little while. This way I pay about $10/month for enough data to get talk / text and the ability to surf the net a lot cheaper!
Edit: Or maybe I will still be able to do this once it is integrated with +.
Let me see that article when you are done! If I move to the US I'll be looking to try the same thing there.
Edit: I am looking at Bolt. Looks awesome. I hope in a few years phone numbers just don't exist. (well, abstracted out).
Edit: For those who say "it's free don't complain" I reply: "Then Google should bill me. I'll pay."
With regards to costlier, yes, pennies per minute are more than free Google Voice. But if Google Voice is going away in the traditional sense, having another option is worthwhile even if you must pay for it.
The ability to call people using Google is already available on Hangout. If you upgrade your Gmail to use Hangout (I still have accounts that are not using Hangout) you will make calls via Hangout interface.
You and I won't be able to host a TextSecure server for our friends and family and still be connected to the general public.
And I agree about phone numbers. They should just be the IP addresses of communication. But nobody's developed a good-enough DNS equivalent (yet). We still all rely on a local cache of numbers in our phones' address books.
http://www.fongo.com/ (And I thought there was another one out of the Waterloo area but can't find it, maybe it was this. )
https://angel.co/signal-mobile
Ya, exactly. When I meet someone. Why not be able to just start typing their name and add them that way. If they change their number it can be updated automatically so I have the new one.
The resistance to adding G+ to accounts seems Sisphyean. Larry Page clearly envisions a common integrate identity systems across the product tree and I don't think anyone is going to stop him.
The problem is that they wanted to brand this move as "hey g+ify your account".
It probably has something to do with the change in terms and conditions. I guess they could have forced everybody to this new terms and conditions (or leave) but instead they let people choose to use google products with the old terms and conditions by letting users to actively opt in to g+ (ehm, some might say "tricked", but that's another story).
What I wanted to say is that usually people look at this whole thing as an evil move, but hey all the companies around amend their terms and conditions and usually don't let you a choice about whether you want to be part of a new incarnation of the service, or not yet.
Note: I'm not talking in favour or against the actual terms and conditions (e.g. the real name policy), this is an orthogonal issue. I have the feeling that in the end it all boils down to this.
Anyway, this is so confusing. The fact that we are still talking about all this crap means that the was a failure in communication.
I wish there was a way to switch to this new identity system, and then disable G+ for your account. This would make so many people happy and probably it won't reduce the number of new G+ users by much.