{"id":4157,"date":"2014-07-24T14:27:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T14:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=4157"},"modified":"2014-07-24T14:27:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T14:27:50","slug":"technology-google-voice-r-i-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2014\/07\/24\/technology-google-voice-r-i-p\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: Google Voice R.I.P.???"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please no.<\/p>\n

I only use one irreplaceable Google service. I can live without YouTube and there\u2019s not a single other product I use from them\u2026seriously. When they killed Latitude<\/a>, I was pretty hurt because i used Latitude for life-tracking so I could see KMLs for where I had physically been the last 5 years\u2026every moment of the day geo-tagged. I really liked that service. The same goes for the most recent news that FourSquare is turning into a recommendation engine for things to do and all check-ins must be done on Swarm now<\/a>. Swarm is a step back from FourSquare\u2019s application and it makes my activities far more public. I don\u2019t want to use Swarm\u2026I want to use FourSquare. I tried Swarm and I hate it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the past 6 months, Gizmodo has touted that the end is near for Google Voice<\/a> and each time, they seem giddy about the whole concept. Calling people from Voice.google.com is too hard I guess so they prefer the technology exist within hangouts instead.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Everyone I know, even my parents don\u2019t know my cell phone number. The reason is because I literally get a new number every year. My land-line and cell phone number change quite often because I simply don\u2019t care about what number I currently have. Yes, I have a land-line, a cordless telephone in my house. when you spend 2 hours a day on conference calls, it\u2019s quite nice to have a real phone. The clarity and latency of a land-line is great. Cell phones still suck at voice latency and call quality especially where I live\u2026and that\u2019s assuming you get reception at all which I haven\u2019t at my last 3 homes here.<\/p>\n

So Google Voice is great! When you call my 415 number, it rings my Macintosh, my mobile phone, my land-line and my desk phone at the office\u2026simultaneously.<\/p>\n

If I don\u2019t like you, I can block you from ever calling me again with one click or simply mark your number as spam. If Blocked, you\u2019ll get a disconnected sound, if spam, you can leave a message but my phones won\u2019t ring. I can text (SMS) from my web browser! This is so cool. I hate typing on mobile devices. I HATE it. Typing with my thumbs is the most painful process in my life right now. It takes hours to write a sentence and I usually just give up and go over to my iMac. So texting is such a big deal with kids my age that I can text from my computer. AWESOME!<\/p>\n

Finally, I don\u2019t have to dial numbers. I click a number from an email and my land-line rings and I pick up and it connects to the number i want to dial.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Google Voice is great because:<\/p>\n