Google finds its Voice

 

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By Stuart Turton and Reuters

Posted on 12 Mar 2009 at 10:35

Google is gearing up to relaunch its GrandCentral phone management service as Google Voice, complete with some interesting new features.

At the heart of Google Voice is the ability to have "one phone number for all your phones, for life," whether that's a mobile, landline, home or work number.

Among the more interesting new features, Google Voice can transcribe calls within thirty seconds of the call ending. These transcriptions are then saved in Gmail, and can be searched and tagged just like normal emails.

It can also do a similar thing with text messages and voicemail, meaning that all communications, whether they occur on a phone or on the web, can be accessed from one location.

Google Voice is based on GrandCentral, a technology that Google acquired in 2007 for a reported $50 million. GrandCentral has been quiet for two years, leading some observers to wonder whether it had met the same fate as Dodgeball, a Google acquisition that was formally shut down this year.

According to Google, it's basically rebuilt the service from the ground up and it now employs the speech-recognition technology it developed for its Goog-411 telephone directory service.

It is unclear how Google Voice will fit into Google's business model, which relies on advertisers to provide 97% of the company's revenue. Google Voice will be free, though users will have to buy credit to make international calls.

The service is currently in beta testing and should be rolled out in the US within the next few weeks. There's no word yet on when it will arrive in the UK.