It looks like Hangouts can make free calls, but GV cannot. At least according to their respective descriptions in the Play store. That seems like a major downgrade.
GV could never make calls. It is primarily a call forwarding service (with tacked on free SMS and now MMS) which allows you to make calls to numbers in other states with no additional cost and make international calls for a low rate. You still need to go through your phone service; as far as your service is aware, these calls are going to a local number (the area code of your google voice number).
He can launch programs all he wants, but unless that trickles down to management, and the incentives are aligned to at least reward iterative development as much as launching new products, it's not going to change anything.
Seems like he should be in the power of defining the reward structure at Google though.
He should have a bit of say in that, yeah. But if he didn't use any of that influence, then it wouldn't happen.
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'll send this along to the one friend I still know using Google Voice though. I'm sure he'll be excited, he was just complaining about something the other day and I was nudging him toward bailing. With Google losing interesting in Voice and integrating it into Hangouts, then apparently losing interesting in Hangouts too, I'd been telling him that Voice was probably dead-dead.
I still use GV daily, but only for voice -- it's basically my craigslist number.
But it gets 4-5 spam calls a day. This varies greatly, and I block them regularly, but I wish I could just push a button and have it blocked while screening the call. My GV number is rather public, considered a business number, and is therefore on every spam list in the US.
I've been tempted to port the number over to my VOIP provider, but I don't really trust their SMS integration any more than Google's. And no call screening.
Doesn't Hangouts do all of the above? The icons in Gmail are video chat, add user, voice chat, and send SMS. Hangouts on my Nexus 6 has the same options. Imgur link to screenshot -> http://imgur.com/a/vTlqO
Hangouts does, but it's impossible to know if we're "supposed" to be using Hangouts. A year or so ago I received a pop-up in my Hangouts app that Google recommended I check out Messenger [0]. It also seems to be the currently recommended option [1] although I don't know why since, as you say, Hangouts can handle all those scenarios. This has understandably led to no end of confusion among Fi/Voice users, including my…
I'm also on Fi (migrated from Voice) and just ignored Allo/Duo/messenger etc. Has there been any official word that plain Hangouts will be changing?
As an xoogler, this tells me that the voice team is now staffed again. It also tells me that the executive team is thinking about reducing headcount and focus on hangouts, but still are uncertain. Finally, it tells me that google still has no idea how to crack the messaging space, and has so no team internally that is taking charge but a bunch of teams with different approaches, all jockeying for executive support. G…
The answer to this is easy: copy imessage. If Apple had even a little bit of common sense they'd support imessage on windows and android and just charge a small fee of some sort to make money off of it. They're blackberry right now, they could own the market if they were willing to eat their own market share. As for google: I have no idea what is up with the stupidity. What people want is simple: an app that works on…
Opening iMessage to other platforms would cannibalize iOS sales. I hear soo many people say they'd try Android, but they can't lose iMessage
Hangouts does, but it's impossible to know if we're "supposed" to be using Hangouts. A year or so ago I received a pop-up in my Hangouts app that Google recommended I check out Messenger [0]. It also seems to be the currently recommended option [1] although I don't know why since, as you say, Hangouts can handle all those scenarios. This has understandably led to no end of confusion among Fi/Voice users, including my…
I'm also on Fi (migrated from Voice) and just ignored Allo/Duo/messenger etc. Has there been any official word that plain Hangouts will be changing?
Yes, features have been removed that don't fit the repositioning of Hangouts as an enterprise messaging app, and bigger changes based on that repositioning have been signalled as coming soon.
So in the brand new blog post, they link to this page: https://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html When you click around, you get to see icons and screenshots from a bygone era
Interesting. What's the conference/merge feature? I've never seen that. I've used the service since GC.
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 be…
Likely because of their "20% personal project time" policy. As best I recall, ChromeOS started as a personal project to see if one could build a OS around a web browser (and Google already had one handy). On top of this Android didn't start within Google. And Rubin ran it as his own fief. Supposedly he insisted that all Android devices come equipped with a mobile radio, and thus Google would not certify WiFi only tab…
A lot of other companies have this policy (Google didn’t invent it) and aren’t in that kind of mess.
The answer to this is easy: copy imessage. If Apple had even a little bit of common sense they'd support imessage on windows and android and just charge a small fee of some sort to make money off of it. They're blackberry right now, they could own the market if they were willing to eat their own market share. As for google: I have no idea what is up with the stupidity. What people want is simple: an app that works on…
In Apple's case, I don't think a lack of common sense is the problem. With the iPhone making the bulk to Apple's revenue, this is a textbook example of a "strategy tax" [0], and the thing about strategy taxes is they're really hard to overcome even when you can see the issue staring you dead in the face. It takes very uncommon leadership to hobble your cash cow. [0] http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/04/30/strategyTax…
After reading that article, it honestly sounds like the author is arguing against the entire concept of strategy, and would probably love Google's "I realize we already have two of those we put no effort into maintaining, but let's compete with ourselves by launching a third and telling everyone it's the future" anti-strategy strategy. Hell: what I want from Google is to see a strategy, as all I am seeing is complete and total chaos. What this article calls "strategy tax" would be better called "bad strategy", and I don't really see the alternative suggestions as better, as there are assuradely solutions (such as making your web browser a component and sharing a layout engine with the word processor, allowing the browser to edit and save simple documents in the format of the word processor, which is then essentially a paid upgrade to the basic editor) that make more sense than "let's sacrifice our high ground on what sounds like a bet".
I have the old google voice app as well as a google voice number, granted MMS didnt work but other features such as spam filtering is the reason I adopted for official use. I routed 2 numbers to each (landline) account and havent looked back