Just about Everyone (Google Inside, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch, GigaOM, VentureBeat, Mashable, LifeHacker) had something to say this week about Google's move into VoIP, or voice-over-Internet-protocol.

Adam Pash over at LifeHacker noticed on Thursday that Google now reserves the label "voicemail" as a system file in gmail, which means you can't create a folder for yourself with that name. According to Mashable's Stan Schroeder, the voicemail service will be an extension of GrnadCentral, a company Google acquired over two years ago now. Current GrandCentral users and a few gmail invitees can access the voicemail functions now.

In a nutshell, the new service will evidently create transcripts of your voicemails and email them to you. Matt Marshall at VentureBeat describes the new service:

I've played with it and am sold. It adds free transcription to your voice messages on a tidy Web page, as well as SMS forwarding to your cell phone, and host of other goodies I'm convinced will make a lot of people run out and start using it. It's free for national calls, and competitively priced for international calls. You can use it from your mobile phone (www.google.com/voice/m) - that's right, free calls from your mobile phone. My favorite: a way to forward unwanted stalkers to a message that says your phone has disconnected.

Everyone seems to agree that Google Voice cold change the life as we know it and maybe even be the answer to world peace...


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