Google has announced a new service, Google Voice. In 2007 Google acquired GrandCentral, a phone management service, for $50+ million. Since then GrandCentral was almost forgotten. Now Google unveils the GrandCentral service as voice call service that can give Skype a run for their money. With Google Voice, a subscriber can have a single phone number and any call made to that number will be forwarded to all your phones – home, cell, office or your hotel room. Calls using Google Voice is free within USA. International calls will cost around 2 cents a minute. The other features include sending, receiving and storing text messages, listen-in feature to listen to calls before taking it, voice mail and voice mail transcript service that allows storing and archiving of voice mail messages as text and many other features.
Currently Google Voice service is available only to existing GrandCentral customers. But as soon as it does open its doors, it will surely cause a major dent to Skype and other similar services. Let’s just wait and see how it rolls out.