What Soft Phones Are You Using?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I believe that @bill-kindle is correct and that functionality was removed. Google Voice isn't what people had hopes that it would be.
I'm not sure what you mean by "what people had hopes it would be".
Hoped
Let me rephrase: what were people expecting/hoping it would be? A free trunk and DID?
Yes. People were hoping for exactly that. An open SIP trunk. Everyone was hoping for a global, free, unlimited phone service.
I'm guessing it was IT people and businesses hoping for that because I had never heard of anything like that for an application of Google Voice until this thread.
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That's all I ever heard about it really. A few people mentioning it here and there for things I can't imagine wanting like voicemail or forwarding but that was all stuff anyone technical enough to get Google Voice already had so I never got the excitement.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That's all I ever heard about it really. A few people mentioning it here and there for things I can't imagine wanting like voicemail or forwarding but that was all stuff anyone technical enough to get Google Voice already had so I never got the excitement.
Let's go on the assumption you don't despise voicemail with the passion of a thousand suns. Unlimited mailbox storage, the option to have it send you an email with the voicemail, a transcript and a text with the transcript.
Forwarding is not commonly used on it. It's a service of it more than a feature. Someone calls my Google Voice, it rings on my computer and my cellphone. I can also place calls with that as the Outbound CID. Want to text me? Here's my cell. Someone I don't know well or a doctor or a store wants my phone number? Google Voice. I'll still get the calls but I can also setup filtering rules. I can setup VM rules so that this group of people get my personal VM message but the rest get my professional one. Old employer hassling you still about infrastructure questions? Filter that number to go immediately to a voicemail that says "Hey, I don't work for you anymore. Please refer to the notes left behind. I will not return your call." There are so many things you can do with it that are business grade features but for free. Even features with caller announcing. Someone calls your Google Voice. You can set it up so they have to announce who they are. Then, it patches through to you and says "Joe Schmoe" is calling. Would you like to accept or decline? It's not meant for businesses but it's got business grade features.
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@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Let's go on the assumption you don't despise voicemail with the passion of a thousand suns. Unlimited mailbox storage, the option to have it send you an email with the voicemail, a transcript and a text with the transcript.
Even if I liked voicemail, that's some boring stuff. I've had that since 2004 or so. Those are normal business as well as home phone services. Sure, not everyone has them, but people who are interested in Google Voice seem like the type who would have already had them. And even if I loved voicemail, no one else seems to use it much anymore anyway. The need for it has gone down so dramatically over the last ten years that the best voicemail service in the world is still pretty trivial.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Let's go on the assumption you don't despise voicemail with the passion of a thousand suns. Unlimited mailbox storage, the option to have it send you an email with the voicemail, a transcript and a text with the transcript.
Even if I liked voicemail, that's some boring stuff. I've had that since 2004 or so. Those are normal business as well as home phone services. Sure, not everyone has them, but people who are interested in Google Voice seem like the type who would have already had them. And even if I loved voicemail, no one else seems to use it much anymore anyway. The need for it has gone down so dramatically over the last ten years that the best voicemail service in the world is still pretty trivial.
A lot of people still use it and those who don't have gone to texting.
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Which Google Voice does as well, I should add.
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You're not selling me on the Google Voice thing. It seems like it's a way for my grandmother to enhance her voicemail and texting.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Let's go on the assumption you don't despise voicemail with the passion of a thousand suns. Unlimited mailbox storage, the option to have it send you an email with the voicemail, a transcript and a text with the transcript.
Even if I liked voicemail, that's some boring stuff. I've had that since 2004 or so. Those are normal business as well as home phone services. Sure, not everyone has them, but people who are interested in Google Voice seem like the type who would have already had them. And even if I loved voicemail, no one else seems to use it much anymore anyway. The need for it has gone down so dramatically over the last ten years that the best voicemail service in the world is still pretty trivial.
A lot of those aren't home phone services. Basic voicemail? Yes. Blocking numbers? Yes. But multiple voicemails, call filtering and blocking from a central panel, etc? Yes, business has had those for some time. In the consumer world those were not around until Google Voice. Or, if you could have multiple voicemails for different, let's call them ring groups, then it would have been a good chunk of change. I have never seen seen that offered on a home user's package. Not even nowadays.
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@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Let's go on the assumption you don't despise voicemail with the passion of a thousand suns. Unlimited mailbox storage, the option to have it send you an email with the voicemail, a transcript and a text with the transcript.
Even if I liked voicemail, that's some boring stuff. I've had that since 2004 or so. Those are normal business as well as home phone services. Sure, not everyone has them, but people who are interested in Google Voice seem like the type who would have already had them. And even if I loved voicemail, no one else seems to use it much anymore anyway. The need for it has gone down so dramatically over the last ten years that the best voicemail service in the world is still pretty trivial.
A lot of those aren't home phone services. Basic voicemail? Yes. Blocking numbers? Yes. But multiple voicemails, call filtering and blocking from a central panel, etc? Yes, business has had those for some time. In the consumer world those were not around until Google Voice. Or, if you could have multiple voicemails for different, let's call them ring groups, then it would have been a good chunk of change. I have never seen seen that offered on a home user's package. Not even nowadays.
Even the most basic services like Vonage have had those for about a decade. And they are a low cost service and an old one.
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@scottalanmiller I'm not trying to sell you to use it. But there seems to be some confusion between the features of Google Voice and the differences of that and your consumer service offerings. As I said, it's not a business service. But it brings business services to the consumer.
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For free. And Vonage is a tiny piece of the market. Most people who have landlines have them through their ISP. Never seen half of what Google Voice does offered via an ISP's phone package.
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@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller I'm not trying to sell you to use it. But there seems to be some confusion between the features of Google Voice and the differences of that and your consumer service offerings. As I said, it's not a business service. But it brings business services to the consumer.
I'm sure it is nice. But it really was touted by people as being advanced and amazing. I think part of the problem is that it's promoted through the guise of being a high tech Google service - it makes it sound high tech. But it seems like it is actually more of an overlay to help telephony troglodytes take legacy telephony and move towards common VoIP services (consumer or business.)
That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing thing, people who aren't up on telephony need help. That's great that Google provides that for them. It's just that with Google's name on it and the routes through which they promoted it, it really came across as being something special rather than a bandaid to help those far behind to get closer to where the slightly technical crowd had always been.
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@ajstringham said:
For free. And Vonage is a tiny piece of the market. Most people who have landlines have them through their ISP. Never seen half of what Google Voice does offered via an ISP's phone package.
Well that only kind of makes sense. Google Voice is only a tiny piece of the market too. Vonage and all the services like it might be a small part of the market, but they've been around for a very long time. And Vonage is cheaper than legacy phone systems, so you could think of it as being better than free - it is a negative cost
I understand that lots of people need to overcome being tied to legacy phones, not understanding the market, etc. But my point was not that that wasn't good or needed, but that Google promotes through the "geeky" channels you get the impression that they bring this stuff out for the leading edge of technology users, not the trailing edge.
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Is Google Voice only a legacy service today? I feel like I had heard that they were phasing it out and just grandfathering for people who already had it. I never noticed it become publicly available. I only ever knew it as an "invite only" service and if I search on it, there doesn't seem to be even an info page for it.
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I believe it's being integrated into the Hangouts product. That's their unified communications platform (or at least their attempt at one).
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@Bill-Kindle said:
I believe it's being integrated into the Hangouts product. That's their unified communications platform (or at least their attempt at one).
That explains things. Is that part of Google+? Google's weird online product line is really hard to follow. They constantly add and remove so many services, it is unreasonable to keep up. I can't tell what is still around or not and what does what. They had several things like Voice, Chat, Wave and some others that I can't really remember that all disappeared. I can't figure out what is going on there. Their constant adding and removing services makes me wary to invest time learning about what they have right now, because by the time I try it out, it's gone. Their platforms just aren't stable enough to waste time learning.
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@scottalanmiller You're telling me. That's the one gripe I have with Google. At times they seem to have no clear concise goal and seem to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. Yeah, Hangouts is actually pretty damn cool in concept. Did you know on top of the Chrome RDP feature, you can configure screen sharing and have experience similar to WebEx but with chat, webcam, voice, screen sharing all for free?
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@scottalanmiller Oh and don't forget about that "Knowledge Sharing" platform called Orkut. Utter garbage if you ask me. Lets see, there's another "secret" program called Helpouts, which is similar to Hangouts but allows you to charge random people asking for help in your area of expertise.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller You're telling me. That's the one gripe I have with Google. At times they seem to have no clear concise goal and seem to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. Yeah, Hangouts is actually pretty damn cool in concept. Did you know on top of the Chrome RDP feature, you can configure screen sharing and have experience similar to WebEx but with chat, webcam, voice, screen sharing all for free?
That's pretty cool. I knew that they were doing some stuff like that. We have all of that internally through Office 365 so when Google does it we tend to overlook it. I really like a lot of their stuff but so often it seems like they are just testing it and investing our time into it will be a waste.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller Oh and don't forget about that "Knowledge Sharing" platform called Orkut. Utter garbage if you ask me. Lets see, there's another "secret" program called Helpouts, which is similar to Hangouts but allows you to charge random people asking for help in your area of expertise.
Too late, I have totally forgotten about both and have no idea what they are. In all seriousness, completely forgot Orkut and don't think that I ever knew Helpouts.
