Mountain View, California — Google Voice, previously dubbed Grand Central, the universal voice mailbox and call-routing service that Google unveiled in March, is now geared up to deliver its first mobile apps for Android and BlackBerry this evening.
Google is releasing a mobile application that will address these kinds of problems. Google Voice, which is anticipated to be available at some point Wednesday, and is only allowed for BlackBerrys and Android phones, will allow users to make calls directly from their phones by assigning a single number to ring their home, work, and cell phones, and also get voice mail messages as text transcriptions.
Google Voice users would get a phone number that should be the only number you hand out to people. With Google Voice, you can route your calls to mobile, home and other phones based on who is calling and when. And those receiving the call at the other end will see the your Google Voice number, rather than your mobile phone number. Text messages will also appear to have been sent from a your Google Voice number.
Google Voice on Android (Credit: Google)
These features have the potential to make Google Voice’s Internet calling service, a potential rival to Skype, far more useful.
However, the apparent missing piece of the puzzle–Google Voice for the iPhone–is delayed a bit, said Vincent Paquet, senior product manager for Google Voice and a co-founder of GrandCentral, the product currently known as Google Voice. He said Apple and Google are busy formulating on getting an iPhone version out the door, but declined to comment on exactly what was holding up the process.
Moreover, these groovy new features will only be available to the limited number of Google Voice users. In June, the company said it was beginning to expand its user base by notifying people who had requested an invitation that they could sign up. A Google spokeswoman said the company was still working through a backlog of requests.
Paquet also touched on two recent areas of interest for potential Google Voice users: number portability and open registration.
On number portability, he said is something that Google is working on but the experience is not quite up to Google’s standards for anything but carrier-to-carrier ports just yet. And regarding Google Voice’s invite-only status, he said that registration has been moving smoothly since Google began sending invites to people who had signed up on a waiting list, although it does not seem like the service will be open without a having to file a request anytime soon.
Android users will be able to locate the app in the Android Market or on Google’s mobile site, but BlackBerry users will have to download the app from Google rather than from the BlackBerry App World.
The apps can be downloaded at m.google.com/voice.