GOOGLE VOICE OFFLINE

GOOGLE VOICE OFFLINE

The world has certainly seen plenty of Google-related service outages over the years, including one last month that took almost all Google products offline for a large number of users. We like to think that Google will never fail us–but the fact is, technology is fallible, and things do go wrong. What’s more, the fact that Google has so much of your information could play a key role in any future monetization plan: Much as Gmail has used content from your messages to determine what ads show on the page, Google Voice could use data about your calling habits or the content of your texts to customize ads within the service. Just this week, one analyst told the New York Timesthat he expected Google to use the system to “help accelerate mobile penetration by creating a larger mobile ecosystem against which Google can sell/target/monetize advertisements.” The ad-free part could easily change, however. Some privacy advocates have expressed concerns that Google Voice may lead to “increased profiling and tracking of users without safeguards.” Whether that’s a problem is largely up to you, and how comfortable you feel with the situation.Īs of now, Google Voice is completely cost-free and ad-free. Still, the data is in someone else’s hands, and it could be used for certain purposes outside of your own personal perusal.

texts to Penthouse Forum is not one of the approved options). Like other Google services, Google Voice is governed by a privacy policy that explains what can and can’t happen with your data (and, I think it’s safe to say, selling your 3 a.m. Is Google suddenly going to publish your entire life on the Web? Of course not. When you pick up the call, and while the caller still hears ringing, you’ll be presented with the person’s name and four options: answer the call, send it to voicemail, send it to voicemail and listen in live, or answer and record the call. Once a call comes through, you have a whole new set of options. You could even set certain callers to be routed directly into your voicemail. If, for example, you wanted your spouse’s calls to go straight through to your cell phone, or your mother’s calls to ring only on your home phone, you could make those specifications. You can set your preferences so that certain calls will ring only certain phones. The true power, though, comes with Google Voice’s advanced routing options. Then, when you receive a call, all of your phones will ring (or a smaller subset, if you choose), and you can answer on whichever one is most convenient at the time. Once you sign up and receive a phone number, you input all of your existing numbers–your cell phone, work phone, home phone, and anything else–into the control panel. Google Voice eliminates the problem of having multiple numbers for multiple purposes.

Google voice