Last week G$$gle rebadged Grandcentral‘s phone service and added a few new toys, including SMS. For the last year or more after acquiring Grandcentral, G$$gle had been quiet about any developments. I had been using Grandcentral for the past three years, and for the most part, it worked well as an alternative catch-all number to forward all of my calls. The call screening option is useful, although I would have preferred to have a more transparent screening process without prompts.

After the makeover, GVoice still has the same call screening process. If enabled, unknown callers will be prompted to record their name before being able to continue further. On my caller id, I only see my telephone number, indicating that the caller used my GVoice number. There is no way of identifying a new caller’s telephone number AND knowing that they called using my GVoice number instead of my cell or home number. It would be ideal if new caller could be identified by a marker id in addition to their number like, “GV xxx-xxx-xxxx”. This identifier is important because most of my important contacts still dial through directly to my cellphone instead of through my GVoice number. I don’t want to have to pick up my phone unnecessarily while on rounds in the hospital.

The few welcome improvements over Grandcentral include SMS, outgoing calls, and a more sophisticated web interface. SMS is huge, because the point of having a catch-all number is for it to be as transparent as possible. While my occupation has balled me into adding an SMS package to my phone plan, Grandcentral was essentially useless for me without SMS. Outgoing calls are a huge perk, albeit complicated to navigate. With Grandcentral, I was not able to place outgoing calls on my home or cell phones without exposing my those numbers. This was confusing to my contacts who had my Grandcentral number. This outgoing call feature is now available with Google, and international calling at a reasonable rate is also available. I can also text international numbers through Google on a payment account linked through Google Voice instead of my cellular provider. The downside is that I have to dial into the phone service and navigate some menus before being able to dial out. I would like a speed dial option in the future, if that is possible.

Overall, I like the improvements that Google has made. The voicemail transcriptions are remarkably accurate, probably due to the data harvesting from their 411 service.  Great business initiative, I might ask. (And for you folks at Google, if you are thinking of branching more into the medical arena in addition to your EMR system, contact me. I have ideas!)

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