adrian

Google Voice is poised to positively gut the antiquated, draconian telecommunications market. This should put the fear of Almighty Google in the hearts of everyone from AT&T to Skype. Things are about to change, and by change I mean effectively from black to white.

Currently, GV is in limited release, just like Gmail was a few years ago. For now you can only get US prefixes, and only from inside the US, but you can bet they will expand as fast as they can. To sum up the revolution: you can have one central number and message service to manage all your phones. And that group can be subdivided, so if Mom calls during work hours she can be automatically routed to messaging. Your work phone doesn’t even ring. You get a text message and a transcript of her message in your email.

Imagine only having to give out one number ever again, and choosing which of your phones will ring when they call, or none at all. Mark my words– telemarketing’s days are numbered.

Right now I can call Canada for a penny a minute. That’s certainly almost all profit for Google, and deservedly so, as far as I’m concerned. Long distance charges from most carriers are ridiculous. And I text for free. International texting, right now, for free.

Of course they have a shiny iPhone app, but Apple had GV Mobile pulled almost immediately, citing overlapping functionality. Never mind the numerous apps that already do that, like Textfree, Skype, fring, and iCall. This isn’t the first time Apple actions have seemed arbitrary, or at least moody. It seems more likely to me that Apple is quite suddenly aware of the ramifications of what Google is proposing. One ring to rule them all, and all of them for free (or nearly so).

There are other apps out there that do similar things, but none with the ubiquity of the Google name, or the globally networked processing power. And none with the feature package.

So Apple is probably acting in their own best interest, and nothing arbitrary about it at all. And they are probably just the first in the telecommunications game to have opportunity to act directly against the inevitable march of the mighty Gooj. Resistance is useless, of course. Google Voice is available as a mobile web app: https://www.google.com/voice/m – easily reachable from an iPhone or any other mobile. A web link isn’t as sleek as an on-board app, but it’ll do for now. Calling out using the Google Voice number is a bit of a nuisance, requiring a callback (instantaneous though it may be) but it’ll do for now. Considering how far this goes in levelling the playing field between consumer and corporation, it’ll do for now.

If you must have the GV Mobile app, and you are willing to jailbreak your iPhone, you can get it via Cydia right here. That’s right, the developers were pissed off enough at Apple for ganking the app that they set it loose in the wild.

You have been waiting for something, anything, that meant not having to choose the lesser among a swarm of evils, and somehow you always knew it would be Google. I’m not deliriously happy that Apple is not showing their best colours here, but then, it’s never been their mantra “don’t be evil.”