Google’s enigmatic voice service known as Google Voice once again surfaces to headlines. It’s becoming a silly ritual, Google unveils something trivial like number portability and the blogs light up with praise rather than condemnation that it’s been missing for...
Dave is an independent analyst and founder of TalkingPointz which is focused on enterprise communications. In addition to this (free and paid) content on TalkingPointz, he contributes to industry sites, can be found at major industry events, and provides advisory services to vendors and financial analysts.
I agree with your overall assertion that Google appears to be letting Google voice wither through neglect.
However, a few of your item points are not correct:
….though the service has no revenue (no fees or advertising).
A nitpick: They do make money from people using the service to make international calls. I am sure, however, that this revenue is minuscule.
There is no way to dial from Google Contacts
I believe you can dial directly from google contacts. I get a little green phone icon next to my contact numbers, and if I click on it, it brings up the google voice dialer.
I realize these are nitpicks; as I said earlier, I agree with your premise that Google voice has so much untapped potential but it nothing appears to be happening there.
(Also, a note about this blog: I commented here on Pin Drop Soup rather than on No Jitter as the registration process to comment on No Jitter is way too complex and invasive just to make a simple blog comment. Any way you can simplify that?)
Hi Larry,
Thanks for the comment.
You are correct – a green phone icon appears in Contacts for click to dial. It is a mouse over icon. I'm not sure if I just missed it completely or if it is new, but it is certainly there now.
Regarding international long distance, that is a reasonable revenue model – Skype has a similar model. It is optional, and I doubt the majority of GV users use it. Plus Google seeded it pretty heavily giving out $1 credit to most users initially.
I should have mentioned both. Thanks.
I've had trouble with the comment engine too. I know they are aware of it. I will post a correction over there.
I agree with what Larry said about Google and No Jitter. Also No Jitter has no way to retweet articles easily and every time I have made a comment it never shows up.
Good article Dave, nice to see someone take a critical eye to Google voice and not another fanboy rave.
Cheers
Chris