Most people know that google voice offers a free phone number. But I heard that this will be the last year that they will be giving out the free VOIP calling. Did anyone else here anything about that?
From what I've read it will still be free through 2012, but I have never read an official confirmation from Google about it. I hope they only charge for calls and the actual possession of the number. I only the very rare call on that number, so I'd be willing to pay for those, but I'm not going to pay for a number that I don't regularly use.
I never used it before, so I won't miss it, but I think they want to make some money off that feature. There's nothing wrong with that, but I would guess some people would be upset.
I wouldn't have a problem paying for any of the calls that I would make and I agree that they should go for it. I just don't want to pay for holding a number. They can have it back as I only use it for the most extreme and rare situations. It did come in handy a few times when I wanted to call some places that I knew would have caller ID and I didn't want them to have my real number.
I can't say I didn't see this coming. I'll admit, I was one of those that pretty much abused the service. How they managed to let that stay free as long as they did is a miracle to me.
Yea I looked it up a few days ago. I don't know how much it will be, but I'm pretty sure it will be a monthly charge type of deal.
I don't think anyone will use it once they start charging... Skype is the best for the voice calling IMO and they have been in the market for a very long time time and are much established... Google has got too many flop shows now - Google Trend, Wave, Buzz. I think we should add this one as well to the list...
I didn't know about Google Voice! But it's no surprise they're going paid. Same thing happened to WhatsApp, it goes paid after a year of using it. They don't seem to want to use ads...
It would be difficult to use ads in Google Voice. They are able to do it in GMail because the ads are generated by the subject matter of the email or when you Google, by the actual search. The only way they could do ads with Voice is if someone is listening to the conversation and that won't go over very well even if the calls are free.
It really doesn't surprise me either. They've never stated that it would ALWAYS be free and I think it even says "for a limited time" or something when you install the plugin to use it. I could be wrong on that part, though. Either way, they were competing with paid services (like some of Skype's services) so they had to be free to rope people in. Now that they've established a better product, maybe they're going to switch to a paid product as well.
Yeah, but maybe since google has a gazillion dollars it doesn't matter as much to them. I have google voice with my iphone app. It works really well... but it's not worth paying for.
I'm not surprised. Hardly anything is free anymore. I am also not disappointed either. I only used google voice a handful of times to prank call my husband and brother lol.
I hope the fee isn't too much, but I can see why they need to charge people. I would pay. I love using Google Voice. I use it every day and make tons of calls and send my friends txts. I actually don't even use my cell that much to text. I haven't since Feb. I don't need to pay Verizon $10 a month for 1000 txts when Google Voice let's me do the same thing for free.
I have to say this does not surprise me at all. The reason they do this is to lure people in. I read recently the WhatsApp is going to be losing their free status as well for people.
Ads might be a tough task to achieve in Google Voice. And not just that, too many people like to use Adblock and Noscript to make that a viable cover of fees.
How exactly do you send texts through Google Voice? I've done it through messengers long ago and directly through the Verizon site, for example. I've never heard of doing it through Google Voice, though.
You're able to use GV as the default for both calls and texts on your phone. Some phones you may have to add the app, but for most, when you first start using it, you can set a default for GV or choose what do you want to do on each individual call or text and a pop up will appear for you to choose.
I have just hear it here and I don't think that this is true (I hope). The things is they have done it for so many years and people loved google just for this reason and they will now let people pay for this? I don't know if this is really a wise decision for google if this is true.
