Google Voice changes voicemail to text messages

by Stevie Smith - Mar 12 2009, 16:30

If the prospect of searching through transcript versions of your phone voicemail is something that leaves you breathless with delight – as opposed to saving time by actually listening to spoken messages – then Google Inc. is eager to make all your dreams come true.

More pointedly, search giant Google has today unveiled Google Voice, a new application that works alongside the company’s free e-mail client Gmail and enables users to store transcripts of their voicemail messages in their e-mail or SMS inboxes.

Sidestepping the apparent banality of its message transcription service, Google Voice has been created on the back of hub communications management technology gathered after Google completed the acquisition of GrandCentral Communications in July of 2007 (before sitting on the company for two years).    

Adding yet another string to Google’s expanding bow as it strives to increase market reach beyond the dominance it enjoys in terms of online search, Google Voice provides users with a single phone number that is used to divert calls to a selection of destinations such as home, the office or a telephonic mobile device.

By utilising speech-recognition software initially created by Google for the Goog-411 directory service, resulting call messages are automatically changed into text transcripts before being forwarded to a waiting inbox as either an e-mail or SMS.

Available from today for those existing GrandCentral users, Google Voice will be rolled out publicly in the next few weeks, with Google insisting that the service is likely to be expanded to include “all sorts of things” in the not too distant future.

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