I used Google voice for my voicemail when I had a gophone. Now that I have an iphone I just use the builtin visual voicemail but still.

It’s an awesome option in itself, and it’s another great addition to the android suite… great proxy for talking to people you don’t trust over the phone..

Great, yet another google service for me to use. I am much like you in that I seem to now be using Google for everything, but I feel like we are quickly running out of options now that Yahoo made a deal with Microsoft. Personally, I am not the hugest fan of Microsoft so now I am left to Google everything under the sun.

I, for one, accept our new Google overlords.

@ Zack: Yeah, it seems of limited use for purely personal stuff – especially since all the people that call me already know my cell phone number and it would be a hassle to make them use this new one. :P

I do see one good application – when you are job hunting give it out to prospective employees. This way you can monitor the calls much easier.

@ Rob: Yup, that’s exactly the type of stuff this is useful for. Craigslist, freelance business and etc..

I don’t see it ever getting integrated with Skype though, because Google Talk already has the voice chat/calling option.

@ jambarama: Wow, you are really getting a lot of use out of it. It really has great potential – the initial problem is starting to use it. Right now, the people that call me often, know my cell phone already. I’m sure that with time I will get more use out of it, just like you did. :)

@ Chris Wellons: Yup. This is one of the reasons why I love Google despite their semi-evil near-monopoly on search, and the privacy concerns. They make awesome products that actually push the envelope and make the interwebs a better place.

@ Mart: Ah, that sucks. Then again, I can sort of see how it would be a logistic nightmare to get this service running all over the world. They might get there one day, but I’d expect them to first expand it into Europe – if they plan to expand it at all. It might remain a US-only thing forever.

Still, you could get a local US number to get messages and text for free with people in US like jambarama’s brother. Which would only be useful if you had friends/family in US that is.

@ Steve: Really? I actually like Chrome a lot. I also found the Google Talk UI to be like 100 times better than what AIM was offering at the time.

@ Lironah: LOL! Awesome!

Btw, I do watch anime. I never picked up sword fighting, but it is one of these things I always wanted to do but never had time or people to do it with. :)

Ohmigosh! I think I’ve found a kindred spirit. Google and gaming and the same opinion about each of the latest comic book movies? I’m blogging about you tomorrow. :D

I love Google’s online services, but cannot stand anything they make that requires you to install something to your PC. I find the Google installable products to be invasive, much like Apple’s crap-pile apps.

I signed up, got an invite but damn! It’s not available in Singapore.

Bummer…. :(

Wow! This sounds like a pretty awesome service! Like many Google services, I wonder, “how do they expect to make any money from this?”

Remember when webmail services only gave you a pathetic 10mb of space? Google came along and cranked that up by two orders of magnitude and really raised the bar. Now anything with less than 5GB is a joke.

I think we’ll see something like that happen here. We’ll see some copycat services (that’s a good thing), and it might even push phone companies to try a little harder. Even if you don’t want to specifically use Google’s service, whatever you do use will improve, thanks to Google pushing the envelope.

I’ve been using this since it was grandcentral, and I love it. The voicemail transcriptions are decent, you can get the gist from them, but more importantly you can get them texted to you.

When we moved out of state two years ago, we got a google voice (then grand central) number which was local to where we moved. So we kept our old number for a while until everyone got switched over to the new one.

When we dropped vonage and got cell phones, we didn’t have to tell everyone about a new number. We simply changed where google voice forwarded to – since everyone already had that number.

Now my wife and I both have cell phones, but no home phone. What if someone just wants to talk to one of us? Our google voice number forwards to both our cell phones.

Personally, I turned off the requirement to self identify (and listen in) since I found it annoying – I like to pick up the phone and just talk. But the ability to send certain numbers straight to voicemail (including a blanket rule for those not in my contacts), is worth its weight in gold.

When traveling in Europe, my brother used google voice to text for free. My brother has a NY cell, but uses google voice to get a local number at college. My father gives out his google voice number so if they take his work cell phone, his personal contacts don’t even notice. When using customer service, I have had google voice record the call. When my father is at work, google voice forwards to his work phone, but after 5pm on weekdays it forwards to his cell.

There are dozens of other reasons google voice is so awesome, but I have to stop somewhere. It is a great service!

I got my invite last week and am real excited about it. I’ve started doing some freelance work for one of my former professors and might branch out from there and try to pick up some more freelance work so I’ll probably use the service as a quasi business number. I’ll probably also use it for dealing on Craigslist. That way I won’t have to give out my actual cell phone number.

I’d like to see them integrate with Skype somehow, but I know they probably won’t.

I’m not sure if you saw this already, but gizmo5 has a free call-in service and I think free call-out (limited to 5min iirc, but hey- still free) if you link it to google voice.