12 ms·

I used to use my Google Voice number as my primary contact number, but when development of the product seemingly died for three years without addressing outstan

by jitl 10y ago

I used to use my Google Voice number as my primary contact number, but when development of the product seemingly died for three years without addressing outstanding issues with group MMS or picture messages, I migrated back to my regular cell number. I've already told all my friends to forget my Google Voice number. I've changed my preferences in every service I use to contact my regular cell number. Now Google is soft re-launching this service after 5 years, and wants me to come back? No way. They squandered more than 5 years of first-mover advantage in the "free SMS" space, and have lost to WhatsApp, Facebook, and Apple Messages. I'm happy than when I need to send test SMSs on my computer, the web app I use will be slightly better. That's my only use-case for Google Voice anymore.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Out of curiosity, why didn't you keep using it, but with Hangouts instead?
- sp332 10y ago
  I thought Hangouts only got those features working with Google Voice numbers about a year ago?
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Has it really only been that long ago? I honestly thought it was longer than that.
    - sp332 10y ago
      It's hard to say since they added features over time. Hangouts launched in May 2013, then got one side of the MMS features working via Google Voice numbers in September 2014 http://www.droid-life.com/2014/09/10/mms-now-a-part-of-google-voice-hangouts-sort-of/ http://www.droid-life.com/2014/09/10/mms-now-a-part-of-googl... Depending on your carrier, it might send the SMS recipient a URL to the content instead of a real MMS. And even now, there's no way to search messages from within the Hangouts app. You have to search from your gmail! There was some other limitation for a while that kept me from moving. Group messages, or voicemail maybe? They did eventually fix it though, so I can't remember.
- jitl 10y ago
  Group SMS and MMS messages weren't supported by the backing service. As group messages became more popular as more of my friends got smartphones, I'd miss more and more communications that my friends were having. Additionally, there were times when even regular SMS messages would be delivered minutes or hours late. The whole system felt unreliable. It felt like the only purpose was to send outbound messages from the computer. At the time that I switched, the Hangouts app was having some difficulties of its own. The biggest issue I had with it is that Hangouts would try to upgrade me from an SMS chat to a Hangouts chat with someone, when the recipient was an infrequent or Gmail-only Hangouts user. Google would recognize their number and send Hangouts messages, they wouldn't see the messages on their iOS device because they didn't have a Hangouts app, so to them it would seem like I had stopped responding.
  - nol13 10y ago
    Same gripe I've had on iOS past, could never figure out if my response was going to go over sms, imessage, or email, and if email which account, so I just avoid as much as possible, and don't setup additional accounts on my iOS devices or ones i set up. Mostly to avoid getting "why am i getting email responses to my text messages" questions etc. Not saying it's hard or complicated, just hard and complicated enough for me to avoid. When I send someone a message there should be no guesswork involved. Not sure how both google and apple could mess this stuff up so badly in their attempts to make it "just work." Or how much of the issue is the "use only our ecosystem or your shit may to break" mentality. :grumble grumble:
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      Apple doesn't care if you can communicate with non Apple users. They have their iMessage population hostage. Those people can never switch to Android because they'll be left out of group texts. It's vendor lock-in of the highest order. Spectacular play by Apple, really. They guarantee switching to Android is painful, you risk losing business deals and messages from friends. I doubt it's legal, but for now they are getting away with it.
      - 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I just recently realized I had to tell Hangouts to ring. I also haven't figured out how to set it to have Hangouts ring when I am on wifi and forward to the phone only when I'm not. So I get dueling ringers.
colechristensen 10y ago
I'm assuming what happened is they used Google Voice to jumpstart Google Fi and left Voice around as a neglected old version which they actually kept supporting (whoo). Now Fi is settled they're turning their focus back to Voice.
- bjt 10y ago
  Except that Fi leaves the really killer Voice features behind. You don't get texts or voice transcriptions emailed to you in Fi.
  - shimon 10y ago
    You do get them in hangouts (on the handset and in gmail on the web). I do get why you might want them via vanilla email, though.
- mark212 10y ago
  no, they bought a company called Grand Central in 2007 and re-branded it as Voice. This was well before Fi. A couple of the key players from GC left to form Uber Conference in 2012 which was then rebranded as Dialpad with backing from Google Ventures. http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/inventor-of-google-voice-now-reinventing-conference-calls/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/inventor-of-google-voice-n...
  - fader 10y ago
    They also stripped out many of the amazing features from Grand Central and then left Google Voice to rot for years, slowly degrading. How they handled Voice (and so many other services) has moved me from being a huge Google fan to someone who immediately starts looking for a replacement when Google buys a company whose services I use. It's almost a guarantee that they'll lose interest in running a service once something else new and shiny comes along.
vostok 10y ago
> I've already told all my friends to forget my Google Voice number. Why didn't you migrate your GV number? That seems a lot less painful than telling everyone to update your contact information.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  This is a nerve-wracking process as there's little to no feedback on how this process is progressing, but it does work! I migrated my Google Voice number, which was long since my primary, out of Google Voice over to my cell carrier about a year ago.
  - vacri 10y ago
    I have this problem at both places where I work, but with gmail. In both companies, the gmail account was registered under the business name (=paperwork name), but the trading name (=public name) is different. So you have to train your users to log in with the business name, even though that's the only time it's ever seen by anyone except the lawyers. Then you have the problem of emails going out under that name instead of the trading name - while the aliases generally work well, you have to train users in setting their accounts properly. I've contacted gmail support about switching over names, but their response was "it'll take around three days, and you may not be able to access email for that time", sprinkled with a tone of "it'll probably work without a hitch". Yeah, you try telling the business side staff that they might not have emails for three days in a busy place... unfortunately I was too spooked to proceed, so can't vouch that it works :)
- jitl 10y ago
  I was never confident enough in Google Voice (because of the issues mentioned above) to port my AT&T number to Google Voice, so many people had both numbers for me.
elastic_church 10y ago
I boosted my Google Voice number out of Google Voice and into T-Mobile. Took like 30 minutes. Secondly, the Google Hangouts app had effectively replaced Google Voice for years. I think picture messages worked there no problem.
wlesieutre 10y ago
That's about where I am with this. I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts, and eventually paid Google $20 to port my old AT&T number into their system. Then Google stopped developing the GV app and I switched from iOS to Android to get the Hangouts Dialer integration. With the Hangouts integration instead of a real GV app, they apparently threw away the spam reporting/filtering (on voice and text) that had been one of its greatest features. Eventually I got fed up with the poor service. Third parties would refuse to accept my phone number, or would accept it but couldn't actually send me messages. Group MMS didn't work properly. As of late 2013, they "integrated" MMS support with T-Mobile and Sprint. When one of them tried to send you a picture, you'd receive it as an email attachment on your gmail account. MMS from AT&T and Verizon users, as far as I can tell, continue to disappear into the ether. I have no idea how many missed social calls I had from people in college organizing social lives via group texts that I never got, and they never knew I didn't get because there was zero indication on either end that it wasn't delivered. As far as I'm concerned, Google Voice is dead. Maybe this reincarnation lasts two years before management decides to refocus on Duo/Allo, or maybe it's six months. Maybe they throw it out and go all-in on a new Project-Fi based VOIP/messaging system. Either way, I'm staying out of it. My number's been ported to T-Mobile on the $30 prepaid unlimited plan, and I switched back to an iPhone. Voicemail transcriptions work just as well as GV's did, and my text messages don't just vanish anymore. Everything's great.
- wlesieutre 10y ago
  I'll send this along to the one friend I still know using Google Voice though. I'm sure he'll be excited, he was just complaining about something the other day and I was nudging him toward bailing. With Google losing interesting in Voice and integrating it into Hangouts, then apparently losing interesting in Hangouts too, I'd been telling him that Voice was probably dead-dead.
  - creeble 10y ago
    I still use GV daily, but only for voice -- it's basically my craigslist number. But it gets 4-5 spam calls a day. This varies greatly, and I block them regularly, but I wish I could just push a button and have it blocked while screening the call. My GV number is rather public, considered a business number, and is therefore on every spam list in the US. I've been tempted to port the number over to my VOIP provider, but I don't really trust their SMS integration any more than Google's. And no call screening.
draw_down 10y ago
I just use it as a secondary number because the area code for my real number is for so far away. Sometimes that would seem strange or suspicious, and I use it during those times.
vpeters25 10y ago
I had a GV as the primary in my resume for years. Last year, many recruiters emailed me that calls weren't going through with a recording stating "The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time". I asked in GV forums to not avail. I don't know how many nice job opportunities I missed when hiring managers saw my application but could not call me back until I detected the issue. Ended up switching everything to a new VoIP number I can control in my asterisk server. Only feature I miss is the speech-to-text on voicemails.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I still use my GV number for all recruitment. I hate actually taking calls so it works for me fine. I call back the ones I want to on my own time. ... I also hate recruiters. They're scum .. but that's another issue. /sorryrant
  - godzillabrennus 10y ago
    You should sign up for http://www.joinjune.com http://www.joinjune.com
- awiesen 10y ago
  That recording isn't in Google Voice. Maybe you had a forwarding phone on your Google Voice account that was eating your calls. (Maybe you had an old one you forgot to take off, and someone else took over the number and it was doing that.)
  - vpeters25 10y ago
    I was told that by GV support, but I'm struggling to find any other likely source for it. I removed all redirections from my GV number and tested: - I called from my home and cellphone, both hangouts and GV ringed. - I asked my family and friends to try the number and it worked fine. - Then I asked a recruiter who was having trouble and he got the recording. - Same recruiter called using his personal cellphone, it worked fine. While speaking with this recruiter on a different line, I asked him to put his phone on speaker and try calling, I was able to hear him getting the recording... I did all this before trying to contact google voice support. To me, it looks as thought GV is in denial there might be an issue on their side and refused to look into it. I speculate there is something wrong in the way calls get routed to GV from certain providers, or some sort of spam caller filter is blocking recruiters who might have been wrongly reported as "telemarketers" by google voice users. Edit: formatting and grammar
chrishacken 10y ago
I was thinking the same exact thing; didn't they say they were closing Voice down in favor of Hangouts awhile back? I freaking love Voice, but Google needs to make high-level internal decisions about which products will get long-term support no matter what, and which won't.
bisby 10y ago
I ported my numbers away after running into so many issues where services would use my native phone number rather than my GV number (placing a call from my car, the person on the other end sees my native number, even though I have everything set up properly) And living in an area with spotty service... native SMS always send, and the GV "over data" SMS usually fail. Unless they can fix a LOT of issues AND add incentive to come back, I think I'm fine without it for now.
slacka 10y ago
I have been using Google Voice/Hangouts for all my daily phone calls and SMS for 7 years now. Since switching from the Google Voice app to the Hangouts App, I have not had any major issues or complaints. Did you you try the Google Hangouts App before ditching Google? I wonder if most of your problems stem from that. EDIT: I just verified that I can sent/receive group MMS. It appears this feature has worked since at least 2014. Seems you missed the memo to migrated to Hangouts.
legohead 10y ago
Close to how I feel about most Google products or APIs. "Hey, that's cool! But remember when they randomly killed X, Y, Z," etc... At least Voice has lasted, I guess.
pokemongoaway 10y ago
The fact that their little update doesn't have a comments/feedback section - and the state of their GV product forum - still demonstrates that they don't take this seriously.
dnr 10y ago
It's a little strange to read accounts like this. I've been using Voice continuously for years now, and ported my old number into it. There were a few years when it kinda sucked (yes, I also lost group/mms messages with no warning), but since the integration with Hangouts (2014? 2015?), I've been quite happy with it again: group messages work, pictures in messages work, etc. Hangouts isn't perfect and still has lots of missing features and annoyances, but it's been overall acceptable to me. I do have two unusual situations that make Voice a good fit for me: I don't have reliable cell reception in my apartment (so texting and calling through wifi is really useful), and I'm on the T-Mobile $30 plan, so I have only 100 minutes on my "real" phone number (so I make as many calls as possible through gmail on my laptop). It's also really nice to use my regular phone number with no extra effort or roaming fees when traveling internationally.
- EvanDotPro 10y ago
  I'm in a very similar situation, and overall have found GV to be a net positive despite the imperfections. The only additional caveat I've found is that the proper carrier-level call forwarding to GV voicemail doesn't work with the $30 T-Mobile plan.
  - dnr 10y ago
    Right, as far as I understand it, several features are unavailable on T-Mobile pre-paid plans, including proper call forwarding, some voicemail things, and their cheap international roaming. It doesn't really bother me since I only ever give out my GV number. The only calls I get to my "real" number are wrong-numbers.
- leephillips 10y ago
  I wanted to do this, as I have the same situation: bad cell connection in the house. But the voice quality on Hangouts was so bad I had to give it up. The audio cuts out every few seconds, for example. This is sitting right next to the router with a Fios connection.
deftturtle 10y ago
As far as I know, you can't call landlines with WhatsApp, iMessage, or FB Messenger. There's value in having a second number that is treated like a cell phone. I can register for accounts with it (Signal, Twitter, etc), and my real phone number stays private. During college, I gave out my GV number for privacy, but it didn't support MMS at the time. Couldn't get photos, and then they wanted me to use Hangouts & claimed voice would be phased out. It was a real bummer, and the Hangouts experience was strange, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread. I'm glad this is being updated, because it provides value to me and definitely other people, too. If WhatsApp can connect you to landlines or function as an actual phone, then that's excellent news. Even so, I would still appreciate having more options.

by jitl 10y ago

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

Out of curiosity, why didn't you keep using it, but with Hangouts instead?

sp332 10y ago
I thought Hangouts only got those features working with Google Voice numbers about a year ago?
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Has it really only been that long ago? I honestly thought it was longer than that.
  - sp332 10y ago
    It's hard to say since they added features over time. Hangouts launched in May 2013, then got one side of the MMS features working via Google Voice numbers in September 2014 http://www.droid-life.com/2014/09/10/mms-now-a-part-of-google-voice-hangouts-sort-of/ http://www.droid-life.com/2014/09/10/mms-now-a-part-of-googl... Depending on your carrier, it might send the SMS recipient a URL to the content instead of a real MMS. And even now, there's no way to search messages from within the Hangouts app. You have to search from your gmail! There was some other limitation for a while that kept me from moving. Group messages, or voicemail maybe? They did eventually fix it though, so I can't remember.
jitl 10y ago
Group SMS and MMS messages weren't supported by the backing service. As group messages became more popular as more of my friends got smartphones, I'd miss more and more communications that my friends were having. Additionally, there were times when even regular SMS messages would be delivered minutes or hours late. The whole system felt unreliable. It felt like the only purpose was to send outbound messages from the computer. At the time that I switched, the Hangouts app was having some difficulties of its own. The biggest issue I had with it is that Hangouts would try to upgrade me from an SMS chat to a Hangouts chat with someone, when the recipient was an infrequent or Gmail-only Hangouts user. Google would recognize their number and send Hangouts messages, they wouldn't see the messages on their iOS device because they didn't have a Hangouts app, so to them it would seem like I had stopped responding.
- nol13 10y ago
  Same gripe I've had on iOS past, could never figure out if my response was going to go over sms, imessage, or email, and if email which account, so I just avoid as much as possible, and don't setup additional accounts on my iOS devices or ones i set up. Mostly to avoid getting "why am i getting email responses to my text messages" questions etc. Not saying it's hard or complicated, just hard and complicated enough for me to avoid. When I send someone a message there should be no guesswork involved. Not sure how both google and apple could mess this stuff up so badly in their attempts to make it "just work." Or how much of the issue is the "use only our ecosystem or your shit may to break" mentality. :grumble grumble:
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    Apple doesn't care if you can communicate with non Apple users. They have their iMessage population hostage. Those people can never switch to Android because they'll be left out of group texts. It's vendor lock-in of the highest order. Spectacular play by Apple, really. They guarantee switching to Android is painful, you risk losing business deals and messages from friends. I doubt it's legal, but for now they are getting away with it.
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
maxerickson 10y ago
I just recently realized I had to tell Hangouts to ring. I also haven't figured out how to set it to have Hangouts ring when I am on wifi and forward to the phone only when I'm not. So I get dueling ringers.

colechristensen 10y ago

I'm assuming what happened is they used Google Voice to jumpstart Google Fi and left Voice around as a neglected old version which they actually kept supporting (whoo). Now Fi is settled they're turning their focus back to Voice.

bjt 10y ago
Except that Fi leaves the really killer Voice features behind. You don't get texts or voice transcriptions emailed to you in Fi.
- shimon 10y ago
  You do get them in hangouts (on the handset and in gmail on the web). I do get why you might want them via vanilla email, though.
mark212 10y ago
no, they bought a company called Grand Central in 2007 and re-branded it as Voice. This was well before Fi. A couple of the key players from GC left to form Uber Conference in 2012 which was then rebranded as Dialpad with backing from Google Ventures. http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/inventor-of-google-voice-now-reinventing-conference-calls/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/inventor-of-google-voice-n...
- fader 10y ago
  They also stripped out many of the amazing features from Grand Central and then left Google Voice to rot for years, slowly degrading. How they handled Voice (and so many other services) has moved me from being a huge Google fan to someone who immediately starts looking for a replacement when Google buys a company whose services I use. It's almost a guarantee that they'll lose interest in running a service once something else new and shiny comes along.

vostok 10y ago

> I've already told all my friends to forget my Google Voice number. Why didn't you migrate your GV number? That seems a lot less painful than telling everyone to update your contact information.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
This is a nerve-wracking process as there's little to no feedback on how this process is progressing, but it does work! I migrated my Google Voice number, which was long since my primary, out of Google Voice over to my cell carrier about a year ago.
- vacri 10y ago
  I have this problem at both places where I work, but with gmail. In both companies, the gmail account was registered under the business name (=paperwork name), but the trading name (=public name) is different. So you have to train your users to log in with the business name, even though that's the only time it's ever seen by anyone except the lawyers. Then you have the problem of emails going out under that name instead of the trading name - while the aliases generally work well, you have to train users in setting their accounts properly. I've contacted gmail support about switching over names, but their response was "it'll take around three days, and you may not be able to access email for that time", sprinkled with a tone of "it'll probably work without a hitch". Yeah, you try telling the business side staff that they might not have emails for three days in a busy place... unfortunately I was too spooked to proceed, so can't vouch that it works :)
jitl 10y ago
I was never confident enough in Google Voice (because of the issues mentioned above) to port my AT&T number to Google Voice, so many people had both numbers for me.

elastic_church 10y ago

I boosted my Google Voice number out of Google Voice and into T-Mobile. Took like 30 minutes. Secondly, the Google Hangouts app had effectively replaced Google Voice for years. I think picture messages worked there no problem.

wlesieutre 10y ago

That's about where I am with this. I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts, and eventually paid Google $20 to port my old AT&T number into their system. Then Google stopped developing the GV app and I switched from iOS to Android to get the Hangouts Dialer integration. With the Hangouts integration instead of a real GV app, they apparently threw away the spam reporting/filtering (on voice and text) that had been one of its greatest features. Eventually I got fed up with the poor service. Third parties would refuse to accept my phone number, or would accept it but couldn't actually send me messages. Group MMS didn't work properly. As of late 2013, they "integrated" MMS support with T-Mobile and Sprint. When one of them tried to send you a picture, you'd receive it as an email attachment on your gmail account. MMS from AT&T and Verizon users, as far as I can tell, continue to disappear into the ether. I have no idea how many missed social calls I had from people in college organizing social lives via group texts that I never got, and they never knew I didn't get because there was zero indication on either end that it wasn't delivered. As far as I'm concerned, Google Voice is dead. Maybe this reincarnation lasts two years before management decides to refocus on Duo/Allo, or maybe it's six months. Maybe they throw it out and go all-in on a new Project-Fi based VOIP/messaging system. Either way, I'm staying out of it. My number's been ported to T-Mobile on the $30 prepaid unlimited plan, and I switched back to an iPhone. Voicemail transcriptions work just as well as GV's did, and my text messages don't just vanish anymore. Everything's great.

wlesieutre 10y ago
I'll send this along to the one friend I still know using Google Voice though. I'm sure he'll be excited, he was just complaining about something the other day and I was nudging him toward bailing. With Google losing interesting in Voice and integrating it into Hangouts, then apparently losing interesting in Hangouts too, I'd been telling him that Voice was probably dead-dead.
- creeble 10y ago
  I still use GV daily, but only for voice -- it's basically my craigslist number. But it gets 4-5 spam calls a day. This varies greatly, and I block them regularly, but I wish I could just push a button and have it blocked while screening the call. My GV number is rather public, considered a business number, and is therefore on every spam list in the US. I've been tempted to port the number over to my VOIP provider, but I don't really trust their SMS integration any more than Google's. And no call screening.

draw_down 10y ago

I just use it as a secondary number because the area code for my real number is for so far away. Sometimes that would seem strange or suspicious, and I use it during those times.

vpeters25 10y ago

I had a GV as the primary in my resume for years. Last year, many recruiters emailed me that calls weren't going through with a recording stating "The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time". I asked in GV forums to not avail. I don't know how many nice job opportunities I missed when hiring managers saw my application but could not call me back until I detected the issue. Ended up switching everything to a new VoIP number I can control in my asterisk server. Only feature I miss is the speech-to-text on voicemails.

djsumdog 10y ago
I still use my GV number for all recruitment. I hate actually taking calls so it works for me fine. I call back the ones I want to on my own time. ... I also hate recruiters. They're scum .. but that's another issue. /sorryrant
- godzillabrennus 10y ago
  You should sign up for http://www.joinjune.com http://www.joinjune.com
awiesen 10y ago
That recording isn't in Google Voice. Maybe you had a forwarding phone on your Google Voice account that was eating your calls. (Maybe you had an old one you forgot to take off, and someone else took over the number and it was doing that.)
- vpeters25 10y ago
  I was told that by GV support, but I'm struggling to find any other likely source for it. I removed all redirections from my GV number and tested: - I called from my home and cellphone, both hangouts and GV ringed. - I asked my family and friends to try the number and it worked fine. - Then I asked a recruiter who was having trouble and he got the recording. - Same recruiter called using his personal cellphone, it worked fine. While speaking with this recruiter on a different line, I asked him to put his phone on speaker and try calling, I was able to hear him getting the recording... I did all this before trying to contact google voice support. To me, it looks as thought GV is in denial there might be an issue on their side and refused to look into it. I speculate there is something wrong in the way calls get routed to GV from certain providers, or some sort of spam caller filter is blocking recruiters who might have been wrongly reported as "telemarketers" by google voice users. Edit: formatting and grammar

chrishacken 10y ago

I was thinking the same exact thing; didn't they say they were closing Voice down in favor of Hangouts awhile back? I freaking love Voice, but Google needs to make high-level internal decisions about which products will get long-term support no matter what, and which won't.

bisby 10y ago

I ported my numbers away after running into so many issues where services would use my native phone number rather than my GV number (placing a call from my car, the person on the other end sees my native number, even though I have everything set up properly) And living in an area with spotty service... native SMS always send, and the GV "over data" SMS usually fail. Unless they can fix a LOT of issues AND add incentive to come back, I think I'm fine without it for now.

slacka 10y ago

I have been using Google Voice/Hangouts for all my daily phone calls and SMS for 7 years now. Since switching from the Google Voice app to the Hangouts App, I have not had any major issues or complaints. Did you you try the Google Hangouts App before ditching Google? I wonder if most of your problems stem from that. EDIT: I just verified that I can sent/receive group MMS. It appears this feature has worked since at least 2014. Seems you missed the memo to migrated to Hangouts.

legohead 10y ago

Close to how I feel about most Google products or APIs. "Hey, that's cool! But remember when they randomly killed X, Y, Z," etc... At least Voice has lasted, I guess.

pokemongoaway 10y ago

The fact that their little update doesn't have a comments/feedback section - and the state of their GV product forum - still demonstrates that they don't take this seriously.

dnr 10y ago

It's a little strange to read accounts like this. I've been using Voice continuously for years now, and ported my old number into it. There were a few years when it kinda sucked (yes, I also lost group/mms messages with no warning), but since the integration with Hangouts (2014? 2015?), I've been quite happy with it again: group messages work, pictures in messages work, etc. Hangouts isn't perfect and still has lots of missing features and annoyances, but it's been overall acceptable to me. I do have two unusual situations that make Voice a good fit for me: I don't have reliable cell reception in my apartment (so texting and calling through wifi is really useful), and I'm on the T-Mobile $30 plan, so I have only 100 minutes on my "real" phone number (so I make as many calls as possible through gmail on my laptop). It's also really nice to use my regular phone number with no extra effort or roaming fees when traveling internationally.

EvanDotPro 10y ago
I'm in a very similar situation, and overall have found GV to be a net positive despite the imperfections. The only additional caveat I've found is that the proper carrier-level call forwarding to GV voicemail doesn't work with the $30 T-Mobile plan.
- dnr 10y ago
  Right, as far as I understand it, several features are unavailable on T-Mobile pre-paid plans, including proper call forwarding, some voicemail things, and their cheap international roaming. It doesn't really bother me since I only ever give out my GV number. The only calls I get to my "real" number are wrong-numbers.
leephillips 10y ago
I wanted to do this, as I have the same situation: bad cell connection in the house. But the voice quality on Hangouts was so bad I had to give it up. The audio cuts out every few seconds, for example. This is sitting right next to the router with a Fios connection.

deftturtle 10y ago

As far as I know, you can't call landlines with WhatsApp, iMessage, or FB Messenger. There's value in having a second number that is treated like a cell phone. I can register for accounts with it (Signal, Twitter, etc), and my real phone number stays private. During college, I gave out my GV number for privacy, but it didn't support MMS at the time. Couldn't get photos, and then they wanted me to use Hangouts & claimed voice would be phased out. It was a real bummer, and the Hangouts experience was strange, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread. I'm glad this is being updated, because it provides value to me and definitely other people, too. If WhatsApp can connect you to landlines or function as an actual phone, then that's excellent news. Even so, I would still appreciate having more options.