Google Voice: what all the talk's about

"In practice, virtualizing your profusion of real-world phone numbers with one that redirects is handy. You can set various preferences – for example, calls from your family members get a custom answering message; calls from your parents don't ring your work number; and calls from your spouse are answered directly when you pick up the phone rather than run through the Google Voice options such as answering the call, sending it to voice mail, or listening in on the voice mail." [Stephen Shankland for CNET]

Skype killer?

"Analysts are divided on how much of an impact Google Voice will have on the domestic and international calling business, though some believe that of all of the features, it's the ability to offer free internet calls that could be the game changer." [Dianne See Morrison for MoCoNews via the Washington Post]

"Google has a huge pool of existing users and a history of rolling out applications that are more stable and feature-rich than Skype. eBay will need to make some serious investments in developing Skype's functionality to compete with the Google juggernaut -- or face selling the service for pennies on the dollar." [Cyndy Aleo-Carreira for The Industry Standard]

Privacy? What privacy?

"The service will give Google enormous amounts of information about the intimate details of your everyday life, including recordings of your voice mail and possibly your phone calls. Combined with what Google already knows about you, it could mean your privacy is at an end." [Preston Gralla for Computerworld]

The last word

"Google Voice looks like a clear winner to us. It takes the best features of GrandCentral and adds a number of important and interesting new features like SMS messaging and voicemail transcriptions. Clearly this is one of the most important products that Google has released in the last couple of months...." [Frederic Lardinois for ReadWriteWeb]

"Still, users have to get over a big initial hurdle - getting all their friends to start using a new phone number instead of the old ones. Business cards are to be thrown out, new ones printed. Contact cards updated. Etc. There’s nothing Google can do to fix this problem." [Leen Rao for TechCrunch]

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