Google Voice: A one word confusion?

As branding goes, Google seems to have hit the jackpot. 'Google' is a noun, a verb, synonymous with 'search' to the extent that most people now confess to 'googling' rather than searching. Part one: success. Part two? Expand into other areas of the web, innovate, keep the google brand and concisely describe new feature. Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Docs. Check! It does exactly what it says on the tin, and it is clear that it was done by Google. 


Moving away from the Google love-in however, and you may well stumble across Google Voice. In theory, voice on the web, by Google. What could be more complicated? Imagine a little deeper and voice on the web can translate into phones, conversations, voicemail. The list is endless. So why has the latest innovation from Google caused so much controversy? Especially as it's not yet here in the UK and most people probably don't know it exists!


A history lesson is called for...


In 2007 Google acquired a company called Grand Central. It was a service that offered customers the opportunity to merge all phone calls to one number. The Grand Central concept and doubtless technology are now the cornerstone of Google Voice. In essence Google Voice lets you filter all your calls to one number and lays out an unprecedented amount of configurable features that govern your entire telephonic communication. Or as their support pages put it:

Google Voice is a service that enhances the existing capabilities of your phone numbers. With it, you can access your voicemail online, read automatic transcriptions of your voicemail, create personalized greetings based on who is calling, make cheap international calls, and more.

Google Voice allows you to have one number to replace all of your existing numbers. When someone calls that number, the phone that rings and the greeting they receive are dependent on the rules you have created. For example, if you contacts are divided into 'work' and 'friends' then you can configure Google Voice to call you work phone if someone calls whose listed in 'work' and your personal mobile if listed in 'friends'. You can even assign contacts individual voicemail greetings and all voicemail is sent to your email in mp3 format and transcribed into text. 


At face value that is quite a proposition and one that has interested me for some time. I've been waiting eagerly for it's deployment in the UK (it's out as an invite-only beta version in the US). It even got a mention when I reviewed the impressive HulloMail voicemail offering.  So what seems to be the problem? As HulloMail pointed out on their recent blog (and no doubt intended to persuade their customers that Google Voice isn't for them!) the reason it is popular in the States and not yet available in the UK comes down to very different market conditions:

Problem is you can’t map a US solution to a Non-US context and expect it to work. Why not? Cos it’s a solution to their problems and not ours – it’s a superb example of what I call ‘the fallacy of misplaced solutions’. What does this mean? Quite literally – it’s a solution ok, but a solution that’s misplaced – ie ‘out of place’ here in the UK. What I mean is, if you’re stateside then you PAY TO RECEIVE CALLS . So let’s take their universal number for all your life and after concept – OK – so from now on your mum calls this number which then calls you – right so how does that get billed then? Over here mobile has developed with different infrastructure, business models, usage patterns and its our main comms line with the world. So the universalist approach that works for Google in search (ie everyone everywhere searches for stuff and you can advertise to them and build a universal solution on the back of that) won’t work for mobile.

Somewhat 'passionately' put, the salient point appears to be that there are two reasons you would adopt Google Voice in the US: the product features stated above and the many listed here, and secondly, the reduction in cost you would achieve. In the US when someone calls you, you pay. When you call someone else, you pay. A two way call is charged to both people. That's an interesting concept and a post for another day. What Google Voice does however, is absorb the cost of the incoming call and charge you that call at cost. The call from Google Voice to any of your nominated phones is always a local call.

In the UK to adopt this model, you would have to pay a local call rate everytime someone called your Google Voice number. This would add extra cost and seems to be the source of HulloMail's pains. It doesn't want to lose customers (like myself) to Google and so is pointing out the downside of their offering, should the same model be implemented in the UK. This would appear to be a strategic decision of theirs as at present they do not make any revenue from me (not directly anyway).

What I think HulloMail and others miss when unraveling this structure is that Google Voice also offers local rate outgoing calls to all numbers. In the UK that would present significant savings. Whether these savings can offset the costs of receiving calls I have no data with which to start any analysis, but they very well might. Of more interest is the effect this would have on the UK telecommunications market, should Google be successful with Google Voice. I can't see me wanting to pay a monthly fee to a mobile network for bundled minutes that I'm not going to use as my calls will be placed by Google Voice. They would charge me and I would pay them. For receiving calls I'd also be charged by them and be unlikely to be able to use my 'free minutes' from the mobile network to pay. The same would go for personal landlines. I'd want both phones as line rental only and manage call charges through Google Voice.

That's not a situation that is going to be taken lightly I don't suspect. In the US customers already pay to receive calls so the mobile networks can keep that revenue from the end user (Google Voice charges network, network charges user).

I can't find any source to confirm or disprove that this assumption is correct so it will have to stand as supposition. However after a bit of thought it does appear logical. The acid test will be whether the features offered by Google (revolutionary in my opinion) are worth the upheaval. Timing may be an issue and the concept may be received in a couple of years where more mobile phones are 'smart phones' and the distinction between landline and mobile has blurred some (it looks like a Google Voice app would be required to manage the service in the event you weren't near the web). O2 are offering a 'mobile landline' and that seems to point the way the industry is heading.

All of the above I can only assume that Google are aware of and will address should the service come to the UK in the future. An assumption!

HulloMail is good, but is it a short-term answer to Google Voice?

Yesterday I stumbled across HulloMail for the first time. (To reference all my sources correctly, it was through an article in The Register that had been posted on Twitter by @allaboutiphone). In short, HulloMail is a service that diverts your voicemail away from the default offering provided by your mobile phone provider to HulloMail. The primary advantage of such a service is that is offers the next generation of voicemail; something only O2 in the UK through the iPhone can even attempt to match through their Visual Voicemail. Essentially visual voicemail works like email in that it gives you a view of who has left a message and the date/time so you can choose what messages you listen to.

Not subscribing to the O2 pay-monthly iPhone tariff visual voicemail is one of the few features of the iPhone that isn't available to me. HulloMail offers a free workaround of this service, and in my opinion it is already better than the iPhone's offering. Firstly, HulloMail uses Gmail technology to store your voicemail messages as mp3's and then emails them directly to your Inbox. You can access your voicemail from any internet enabled location, even when you don't have your mobile to hand. It also offers a customisable text messaging service which is similar to O2's, in that when you have a new voicemail, it send you an SMS and you can call the phone number (local 01 number too!) and listen to your message. It will also tell you if someone called but didn't leave a message. This doesn't interfere with the missed call function on your iPhone, so a full audit of sent/received calls is still available.

An impressive additional feature is that you can sync your contacts with Google and other providers, so instead of a list of numbers you can see names of people who've left you a message. This sounds straight forward when you consider listening to messages from your phone, but it takes on a different and more impressive function when you're checking your messages through your email! In Gmail, HulloMail will also create and label and label all messages as well; keeping things neat and tidy!

The upshot of this new approach is that your voicemail is now more accessible, with greater control over how you listen to your messages and has the added, and

probably key, benefit of being stored forever and simply to retrieve! It's a bold and innovative move from HulloMail and one that I'm sure will catch on to other, bigger players in the market place before too long. Which brings me to my second point...

Like most people who consider themselves to be cool, but in fact others would probably judge as Geeky or techy, I sign up to a lot of innovative service in the beta stage. (I'm currently waiting either to be invited by Google directly to test Google Wave, or for my invite from a very kind @artinliverpool for the invite they sent me to come through!) One service I was looking forward to getting a sneak preview of was Google Voice. Unfortunately when it did come through I was left disappointed as it's currently only available in beta in the US. (I might change my language settings to US, see if that works!)

From the preview information and marketing copy I can find of Google Voice, it's very similar to HulloMail. However and unfortunately for HulloMail, the list of additional features is also very impressive! In addition to shared features of being able to listen to voicemail on the web and receive notifications via email and SMS, Google offers voicemail transcripts to SMS and email as well as a host of calling features, conference calls, call screening and just about everything else you could wish for! The demo really does look exciting (if you like that sort of thing).

I've always been something of a loyal customer when it comes to technology: not afraid to change, but willing to stick with what I've found good service in the past. In theory that should persuade me to stick with HulloMail over Google Voice, but I suspect I won't. As I've posted about previously, I'm a big Google fan. Not only do I like their approach and the applications and services they produce, but increasingly it is becoming easier to adopt Google's version of the latest technology because I'm using so many other Google applications already! (one notable exception is the Andriod phone, but I'm not ruling it out). People may cite Microsoft as a dangerous precedent, but I believe that Google leant many lessons from how Microsoft developed during the 90's and have built a strategy that tries to ensure they won't repeat their mistakes. Their pricing and commercial model, for example, is so different, they shouldn't be labelled as Monopolists (is that a correct noun?) quite as readily as Microsoft were.

However, no amount of Google praising and reassurances that they will be a 'different' will be of much comfort for the likes of HulloMail. A great, innovative product built by small team of both technical and entrepreneurial minds, but still under a very real threat of trailing in the dirt of the new corporate machine.