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Google Voice With You Number & Google Voice Voicemail

by Ronen Halevy on Oct 27th, 2009 at 9:40 am EST
34 Comments »
 

Voicemail-google I guess there had to be a reason for Google’s upgrade for their Google Voice BlackBerry application. They just announced the release of a newer option for potential Google Voice users. You can use your regular cellphone number and have your voicemails handled by Google Voice. Kind of like YouMail and other similar services. When you sign up for Google Voice now you will get the option of either using your existing number just for voicemail or getting a new Google Voice number.

if you sign up for Google Voice with your existing number, you’ll get:

  • Online, searchable voicemail
  • Free automated voicemail transcription
  • Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
  • Email and SMS notifications
  • Low-priced international calling

If you decide to also get a new Google number, you’ll get all of the above PLUS:

  • One number that reaches you on all your phones
  • SMS via email
  • Call screening
  • Listen In
  • Call recording
  • Conference calling
  • Call blocking

Pretty cool stuff! Current Google Voice users can also use their existing number by following the instructions at this link.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 and is filed under News.
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34 Comments to “Google Voice With You Number & Google Voice Voicemail”

  1. Posted by: Nikolaus Walch
    October 27, 2009 at 9:47 am EST

    That’s cool an all, but who wouldn’t want a Google Number: One to rule them all.

    Reply
  2. Posted by: luca
    October 27, 2009 at 9:51 am EST

    Love it on my Bold, unfortunately it is pretty useless in Italy :-) I use it mainly when traveling to US.

    Reply
  3. Posted by: jonp
    October 27, 2009 at 10:12 am EST

    does this still only work in the US?

    Reply
  4. Posted by: webchetan
    October 27, 2009 at 10:16 am EST

    So that means its an alternative for YouMail?

    Can someone please advise!

    Thanks

    Reply
  5. Posted by: DavidB
    October 27, 2009 at 10:43 am EST

    It would be interesting to compare if Google does a better job transcribing than do ATT or Verizon VVM apps…

    Reply
  6. Posted by: c0rinne
    October 27, 2009 at 10:52 am EST

    I’m kind of scratching my head because I’ve been using Google Voice as my cellphones voicemail for weeks now.

    Reply
  7. Posted by: webchetan
    October 27, 2009 at 10:54 am EST

    I just changed from YouMail to Google Voice!!! Awesome Google!!!

    Reply
  8. Posted by: Randy
    October 27, 2009 at 11:03 am EST

    I’m surprised nobody has asked this yet, but If you decide to Use your Actual Mobile Phone Number for Google voice, if you quit Google Voice, or switch back to your Google Voice-issued number, Does anything Happen with your Carrier?

    I have sprint.. How do the permissions on this work? like how does the Wireless Carrier Get the Go-ahead to switch Phone numbers around?

    Reply
    • Posted by: Nikolaus Walch
      October 27, 2009 at 11:36 am EST

      ##004# will turn off forwarding. The commands to star forwarding are easily explained when you initiate this with GV

      Reply
    • Posted by: webchetan
      October 27, 2009 at 11:38 am EST

      On ur phone you can change whichever number you want to direct/forward your calls when Busy or unable to answer, whihc is what call forwarding on busy is suppose to do. I don’t think it has anything to do with Wireless Carrier!

      Reply
    • Posted by: DavidB
      October 27, 2009 at 12:27 pm EST

      “I’m surprised nobody has asked this yet, but If you decide to Use your Actual Mobile Phone Number for Google voice, if you quit Google Voice, or switch back to your Google Voice-issued number, Does anything Happen with your Carrier?”

      As was said Randy, if you quit using Google Voice on your actual mobile phone number, you would just disable call forwarding. GV (and YouMail, etc.) works by setting up a call forward for unanswered calls which you would just need to turn back off. The method of doing so varies by carrier. I believe with Verizon you dial ‘*73′ and send. The thing people need to keep in mind when enabling this though is that some carriers MAY charge to forward calls. I know when I had a Nextel phone I was hit for $.10 for every call that was forwarded to my other cell, and I believe Verizon USED TO charge for forwarded calls but no longer does.

      Not sure what you mean by “Wireless Carrier Get the Go-ahead to switch Phone numbers around”. GV doesn’t add another phone number to your device, it just gives you a number that you can then setup to reach you at your carrier supplied mobile number (or home number, or work number, or all, or whatever). The call is still a cellular call to your mobile number as far as YOUR carrier is concerned. Where it might get sticky is if the person calling you has some sort of M2M free calls plan, when they call your GV number (versus your mobile number) that call might not qualify FOR THEM as a M2M call! You can setup GV so that all GV calls show up at your phone as your GV number versus the caller’s number so that if you have some “faves” or “circle” or “friends” plan you can setup your GV number in that and the incoming calls would be free.

      Reply
  9. Posted by: Nikolaus Walch
    October 27, 2009 at 11:35 am EST

    YouMail has been good to me. I’m so torn!!

    Reply
    • Posted by: Nikolaus Walch
      October 27, 2009 at 12:22 pm EST

      Ok I switched, but what I liked more about YouMail is the e-mail contains the voicemail audio as a .mp3. With GV it is just a weblink to stream it to you. I’d prefer the former because you can listen to voice mails when you have low/no signal anytime.

      Reply
      • Posted by: mh
        October 27, 2009 at 12:45 pm EST

        Nikolaus, that’s true, but with YouMail the MP3 attachement is not automatically downloaded to your device anyway, so there’s effectively no difference between clicking the link in GV and clicking on the attachement from Youmail – you need to be have a signal in both situations.

        Reply
        • Posted by: DavidB
          October 27, 2009 at 1:15 pm EST

          I think his point was you can listen to the MP3 any time. Once downloaded the MP3 attachment is on your phone. So if you happen to be in a no coverage area you can still listen to the MP3. You can also forward that MP3 to someone (email, BBM, etc.) if you needed someone else to hear the VM. Also with YouMail BB app the VM’s are also all downloaded to your device and the audio is stored on your memory card for anytime playback.

          GV also stores the VM on your device if you use the GV app and you can then play it back any time. But I haven’t found a way (yet?) to get GV to email me an MP3 of the audio that I can then use outside of GV.

          A difference I’m seeing is that YouMail app downloads the VM in the background shortly after caller hangs up. GV app only seems to retrieve the VM when you click to play it. In both apps once each VM is downloaded they seem to be retained on device.

          Reply
  10. Posted by: mh
    October 27, 2009 at 12:50 pm EST

    I’m excited to ditch Youmail and do everything in GV, but there is one problem I have not seen addressed yet:

    If you set up GV as your voicemail for your cellular number, then when there’s no answer the call is forwarded to your GV number. GV will then ring back to your cellphone creating a circular situation. It may also mean that your caller will have to wait 8 rings before leaving a message on GV…

    Reply
    • Posted by: mh
      October 27, 2009 at 1:10 pm EST

      I just switched from Youmail to GV. There’s no issue. GV has two options in the settings: a. Send calls straight to voicemail, or b. ring my other phones and then send to voicemail. They crafted this beautifully!

      I really feel sorry for Youmail. They won’t be around for very long.

      Reply
      • Posted by: DavidB
        October 27, 2009 at 1:19 pm EST

        “I really feel sorry for Youmail. They won’t be around for very long.”
        That may be true. It’s hard to compete with the market power of Google. I always thought YouMail’s only shot at long term viability was to build up a paying customer base before Google decided what to do with Grand Central. If YouMail has been able to do that remains to be seen. Perhaps they can beat out GV on the transcribing front? I haven’t tried their pay transcription service, but I can say that for ME GV’s transcriptions have been horrible.

        Reply
      • Posted by: AdamG
        October 27, 2009 at 2:55 pm EST

        Are you saying that you are just using GV for voicemail now? Because if you would like to actually use your GV number to forward to other phones, like its supposed to be used, I am getting the circular ringing situation you mentioned 1st. Am i missing a way around that, other than using a second GV number?

        Reply
  11. Posted by: mh
    October 27, 2009 at 1:42 pm EST

    The retail software industry is a bitch. You can’t say they couldn’t see it coming. I can’t imagine they have more than a few employees. I saw the entrepreneur on tv a while ago pitching his product. I guess they will depend on people not getting their GV invites for their short term survival.

    Reply
  12. Posted by: AlexQuilici
    October 27, 2009 at 1:48 pm EST

    I think the reports of YouMail’s demise are likely exaggerated. We’re growing quickly, we have a growing set of wireless carriers who are starting to replacing their voicemail with YouMail, and we have major distribution partnerships that are live but haven’t been announced. Plus we are seeing a growing collection of people who for privacy reasons don’t want all of their information stored with a single provider.

    It is true that we don’t offer low-quality transcriptions for free. We used to do it, everyone got excited at the first few good ones, and when the bad ones showed up, the appeal diminished rapidly. Doing transcriptions nearly perfectly is just costly. However, we can understand if ok transcriptions are good enough for some people and they’d prefer a service that has those (vs. paying a small amount monthly for nearly perfect ones).

    And for people who have multiple phone numbers that matter, we totally get the appeal of a single new number. It’s worth pointing out, though, that the number of people for whom only the cell phone matters is getting close to being the majority of consumers in the US.

    But at least one of the issues raised above is easily solved in YouMail.

    For example, you can go to our alerts settings page and turn on MP3/wav attachments. All your e-mails will include the audio, so there’s no need to go to the web site or use the visual voicemail client(s) to play the message. We don’t see the need to force you to go to a web page to retrieve your voicemail, but like to provide that option for people who don’t want to deal with attachments.

    We’d encourage feedback on how we can improve the service. Tell us what you’d like to see – and if you have a problem, let us know.

    Alex
    CEO, YouMail

    Reply
  13. Posted by: alb123
    October 27, 2009 at 6:55 pm EST

    Well, that’s a very cool option for people who are just signing up for Google Voice. What about those of us who’ve had accounts established for a while now. I don’t use Google Voice like I thought I would, but I would love to take advantage of using their Voice Mail service…

    Is it possible to do this?

    Reply
    • Posted by: DavidB
      October 27, 2009 at 7:33 pm EST

      What, can you add Google Voice voicenail to your existing mobile number in place of your carrier voice mail? Of course, that’s what this upgrade is all about! Just log into your GV account from a PC and it will tell you the steps to do so.

      Reply
  14. Posted by: Akash1NY
    October 28, 2009 at 10:46 am EST

    I’ve had Youmail for some time now and LOVE IT. The only thing I’d hate was after the first 5 transcriptions… no more. But the Blackberry app works great, and once I upload all my 800 contacts works even better.

    But NOW…

    I made the switch to Google Voice only because I had signed up a while ago with an all new number, but never used it… Now I can add my own mobile number that I’ve had for over a decade! Might not get all the perks of Google number that I chose a while back, but now I get all transcripts of messages and it’s more accurate than YouMail.

    The app looks nice on my 8900 and well. I already have a Google folder for all my other Google apps that I use only now and then like Google Mobile App, GMail, Google Maps, of course Google SYNC!

    Been waiting to use my own existing number and not theirs. Poor Youmail. I really did like their service. I haven’t killed it yet. Gonna see how this goes for a little while. Can always unsubscribe my existing number from Google Voice (by simply unchecking the box) if I don’t like it.

    Reply
    • Posted by: AlexQuilici
      October 28, 2009 at 11:56 am EST

      If YouMail was turning off your transcriptions after “5 of them”, you were on an old, free plan we had with our lower quality transcriptions – which is why you didn’t have a great experience. Just as people are complaining about other service’s free transcriptions – it’s really hard to get it right and make it free at the same time.

      Our newer plans – which are paid – have been running at 95%+ accuracy, generally only getting the occasional person or place name wrong. We actually have a free trial offer now that lets people experience our new, high quality transcriptions for a week – and we’re getting really positive feedback from people who want more than just a rough gist of a message.

      Alex

      Reply

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