21
Google’s Grand Central – Ring Ring!
Entry Feed Trackback
Google is on its way to conquering the world with each new acquisition (at last count over 50 companies). Their offerings are so pervasive in my day-to-day life that I can’t remember what I did before Gmail or the ability to use the word ‘google’ as a verb meaning “to search.” Each time I hear about another application or utility that Google has taken over, I am again amazed at what people are capable of developing and more importantly, Google’s ability to snatch up these products, improve upon them, and present them to the world — usually free of charge.
Google Docs has gone mainstream, and Google Maps is one of the top three internet mapping sites. Other popular acquisitions include Picasa, for web albums; Blogger, a blog publishing tool; Android, software for mobile devices; YouTube, a video hosting site; AdSense, an advertising application… the list goes on and on. These are all applications and utilities that many of us use regularly and love. However, I was recently pointed in the direction of a pretty handy little utility called Grand Central. The basic idea behind Grand Central is one phone number and one voicemail box for all of your phones – home, office, mobile, whatever. That’s not all, though… you can screen callers, hear why someone is calling before taking the call, personalize voicemail greetings for callers or groups, or even let people call you from the internet without showing your real number; these are just a few of the features this service provides.
Google took over Grand Central back in July of 2007; it’s still in beta, but they are accepting phone number reservation requests by area code and will hopefully release it soon. I’ll be patiently watching my inbox for an invitation to join them!
For reference: A pretty comprehensive list of Google’s acquisitions as of October 2008, with their derived services.
Kristin Mott
Network Engineer Team Lead
Everon Technology Services
Email This Post
There are some things about it that suck. DO NOT USE THIS FOR A BUSINESS NUMBER. The numbers are not portable, meaning if you grow “out” of the service, you will not be able to take the number with you.
Anthony at Jan 22, 09 at 2:03 am