Still no support for Canada?
Updates to our Google Voice apps
101–110 of 364 posts
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#102As a current Fi user and former Voice user, I'm still unclear on the relationship between the two. Hangouts for Mac still rings when I get a phone call, but I can't answer the call.
Not sure if this is still the case... but Google Voice cannot forward calls to any Fi numbers. So if (for example) your business uses Google Voice to route calls for customer service, you will not be able to receive them. This was an unpleasant little "feature" when we made the switch to Fi.
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#103Just to add a counterpoint, I've been using Google Voice for, I think, 7 years. I've never had any issues with it and the lack of updates always felt like "don't fix what isn't broken." It's gotten slowly better and better with the Hangouts app. I never really needed anything more complicated than texts and voice, but the transcribed voicemail is a godsend.
I had the same positive experience until I got a Nexus 6P and decided to try Fi (living in a remote area w/ only wi-fi). The new phone and services were outright hostile to Voice, so I created a new number and left voice alone. Really glad I did, but it will probably be a year before I start handing out the voice number again.
I've been using it for at least 6 years and have had a very positive experience. It's been a set-it-and-never-think-about-it experience for the most part.
I think I avoided the issues that you have just do to a nice (accidental) little quirk, though.
I have my Google Voice account associated with my (grandfathered-in) G-Suite address, and Project Fi only allows you to sign up wiht a Gmail address. Therefore, I was able to port my old Verizon number to my @gmail address (which rarely gets used) that's associated with Project Fi and keep my GVoice number where it was, at my G-Suite address.
So I'm currently using my Nexus 5X on Project Fi with both my carrier number (which I've had for probably 15 years now) and with my GVoice number (which I've had for 6+).
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#104The writing os more like the old google, frlm the top of my mind from the google desktop search click through ten years ago: "read carefully, this is not the normal yadda yadda".
I hope hope hope that we can get old google back. I used to be a fanboy back in tje day but they have made a decent effort to get rid of us over the last ten years. For me it has been the breaking of blogger (bad js + redirect to country specific domain), tasteless heavy pushing of Chrome, making Android closed, killing gds, still pretending Europeans are less worth than Americans (actually we never got access to google voice).
Theres a lot of stuff that could need old google like social networks (google+ is wonderful but few uses it), communication (I was a walking billboard for Whatsapp, but they sold out to Facebook and Facebook went ahead to confirm all our scepticism as valid) etc etc.
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#105I've been a Google Voice user for 6-7 years. It became more important to me 5 years ago when I moved to the UK and ported my mobile number to GV. It's not been very pretty. We were thrown a lifeline with the Google Hangouts app taking over for the absolutely-awful Google Voice app. One of the most frustrating things about GV is that for certain SMS providers, it fails the "is this a USA number test" or "can we SMS to…
> Are there any good alternatives?
You might want try the RWG Mobile app [1][2]. Although I have only used it within the UK, they appear to give you a real number rather than VOIP number. I'm not sure if this applies to the US or Canada, but you could check with them.
One of the main reasons I started using the app was because it was the only one I could find that could successfully receive 2FA SMSs. Another reason was because EE hadn't yet enabled Wi-Fi Calling for my phone (Nexus 6P) and I needed a way to receive text messages over Wi-Fi since the 2G/3G reception is really poor where I work.
Being able to centralise voicemail [3] across multiple devices is also quite useful.
[1] https://www.rwgmobile.wales/features/
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rwgmobile....
[3] https://bayton.org/2016/07/using-rwg-mobile-for-simple-cross...
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's about where I am with this. I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts, and eventually paid Google $20 to port my old AT&T number into their system. Then Google stopped developing the GV app and I switched from iOS to Android to get the Hangouts Dialer integration. With the Hangouts integration instead of a real GV app, they apparently threw away the spam reporti…
I was a die-hard Google user/fanboy until about a year and a half ago. I was a Fi user, Voice user (before Fi), Hangouts, Nexus buyer, you name it (I even had a Google TV and almost bought an OnHub). I bailed on it all when I realized that Google has absolutely no long-term vision or desire to support what they produce. I went to an iPhone and despite Apple's warts, it's a night-and-day experience. I'll never again t…
Frankly, I can't understand how Google is so chaotic. Perhaps it's the organization, which looks more like a conglomerate than a cohesive corporation with a clear vision.
They release products, only to abandon many of them without a clear reason (like Google Talk). Or they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS, or Allo & Duo).
The Google Talk fiasco got me particularly disenchanted. A beautiful, open, standards-compliant product (they even helped extending XMPP with Jingle!) gets replaced by a proprietary mess like Hangouts.
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's about where I am with this. I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts, and eventually paid Google $20 to port my old AT&T number into their system. Then Google stopped developing the GV app and I switched from iOS to Android to get the Hangouts Dialer integration. With the Hangouts integration instead of a real GV app, they apparently threw away the spam reporti…
I was a die-hard Google user/fanboy until about a year and a half ago. I was a Fi user, Voice user (before Fi), Hangouts, Nexus buyer, you name it (I even had a Google TV and almost bought an OnHub). I bailed on it all when I realized that Google has absolutely no long-term vision or desire to support what they produce. I went to an iPhone and despite Apple's warts, it's a night-and-day experience. I'll never again t…
Same happened to me a long time ago. This is kind of why I think "apple is dead" is a little early...
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#108Why didn't they just improve Hangouts? I don't know anyone that uses Allo and as far as I know there's no desktop client. I linked Voice to Hangouts so I could get all of my messages in one app on both my phone and within gmail. Now it seems like they want me to split everything up between 3 apps (Voice for SMS, Allo for chat on mobile, and Hangouts for chat on my computer) that fewer and fewer people are using. Why…
I'm a Voice and Hangouts user that would love to use Allo. Well, actually, let me rephrase - I'd love to have Hangouts have Allo's features such as the Google Assistant integration and emoji. Allo just added to the segmentation mess that is Google Messaging, who knows what is going on anymore.
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#109Google's never ending iteration of messaging products comes across as schizophrenic. They have no focus, no discipline, no willingness to stick with an existing solution. I actually want them to just leave GV alone since it just works for me and now that they've turned this into a messaging product I know its days are numbered.
It's like maybe I'm thinking I should now move away from GV because their executive team has shined their spotlight on it, unearthed a working service and will now exploit it for their own professional benefit, sucking the value out of it to achieve personal career advancements leaving users in the dust once it all falls apart and the next iteration begins.
My phone number isn't a product that's ripe for Google-style innovation. I value stability and want to depend on it. I'm really unhappy about all this.
Re: Updates to our Google Voice apps
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The specific root cause is Google's practice of promoting based on product launches; it literally doesn't matter whether that product goes on to be successful. This practice creates a strong and perverse incentive to continually launch new products while discouraging iterative development of existing products.
I've never worked at Google, but... didn't Larry Page announce a full-blown program to fight that like 3-4 years ago? Work on features/depth rather than new products?
Perhaps it was launched but it literally didn't matter whether that product went on to be successful.