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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

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.
baggachipz 10y ago
I was a die-hard Google user/fanboy until about a year and a half ago. I was a Fi user, Voice user (before Fi), Hangouts, Nexus buyer, you name it (I even had a Google TV and almost bought an OnHub). I bailed on it all when I realized that Google has absolutely no long-term vision or desire to support what they produce. I went to an iPhone and despite Apple's warts, it's a night-and-day experience. I'll never again trust Google products.
- nextos 10y ago
  Frankly, I can't understand how Google is so chaotic. Perhaps it's the organization, which looks more like a conglomerate than a cohesive corporation with a clear vision. They release products, only to abandon many of them without a clear reason (like Google Talk). Or they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS, or Allo & Duo). The Google Talk fiasco got me particularly disenchanted. A beautiful, open, standards-compliant product (they even helped extending XMPP with Jingle!) gets replaced by a proprietary mess like Hangouts.
  - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
    This: "they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS)"... I've been thinking the same exact thing. Google basically split the ecosystem in half...devs have to unnecessary build seperate apps for each (unless they are using a cross platform engine).
    - ramses0 10y ago
      Not really... chromeos is the bare minimum linux environment to run a chrome browser on laptop hardware. Android is some frankenstein of java IDE to develop phone software. They might-should-be the same, but they're fundamentally very different roots.
      - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
        Actually, I'm agreeing with you... Google never really should have done Android but rather skipped directly to making Chrome OS for phones.
slg 10y ago
>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. That is what forced me away from GV a few years back. It is an unforgivable flaw of a communication product for messages to completely disappeared from the system without any party knowing. The fact that Google was comfortable with that flaw for years tells you all you need to know about their commitment to these kind of products. It will take years of updates like this before I start to believe that any renewed commitment will stick.
tedmiston 10y ago
> I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts What? Unlimited texting has been included in every phone plan I've ever had since the first iPhone or earlier, before Google Voice existed.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Unlimited SMS has been the norm for a little while now (5ish years maybe?), but it wasn't too long ago that the lower tier plans for every mobile carrier in the US (not sure about elsewhere) had a per text charge, possibly after hitting a low monthly limit on free texts, or possibly with no free texts at all.
- SamBam 10y ago
  > every phone plan I've ever had since the first iPhone Exactly... You realize there was a time before then, right? In the mid 2000s, texts cost between 10-20c to send, unless you bought a bundled plan, which weren't actually that common then, and even then you were limited to usually 200 texts/mo. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/aboutus/mission/viewpoint/why-text-messaging-is-too-expensive/overview/text-messaging-ov.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/aboutus/mission/viewpoint...

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.

baggachipz 10y ago

I was a die-hard Google user/fanboy until about a year and a half ago. I was a Fi user, Voice user (before Fi), Hangouts, Nexus buyer, you name it (I even had a Google TV and almost bought an OnHub). I bailed on it all when I realized that Google has absolutely no long-term vision or desire to support what they produce. I went to an iPhone and despite Apple's warts, it's a night-and-day experience. I'll never again trust Google products.

nextos 10y ago
Frankly, I can't understand how Google is so chaotic. Perhaps it's the organization, which looks more like a conglomerate than a cohesive corporation with a clear vision. They release products, only to abandon many of them without a clear reason (like Google Talk). Or they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS, or Allo & Duo). The Google Talk fiasco got me particularly disenchanted. A beautiful, open, standards-compliant product (they even helped extending XMPP with Jingle!) gets replaced by a proprietary mess like Hangouts.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  This: "they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS)"... I've been thinking the same exact thing. Google basically split the ecosystem in half...devs have to unnecessary build seperate apps for each (unless they are using a cross platform engine).
  - ramses0 10y ago
    Not really... chromeos is the bare minimum linux environment to run a chrome browser on laptop hardware. Android is some frankenstein of java IDE to develop phone software. They might-should-be the same, but they're fundamentally very different roots.
    - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
      Actually, I'm agreeing with you... Google never really should have done Android but rather skipped directly to making Chrome OS for phones.

slg 10y ago

>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. That is what forced me away from GV a few years back. It is an unforgivable flaw of a communication product for messages to completely disappeared from the system without any party knowing. The fact that Google was comfortable with that flaw for years tells you all you need to know about their commitment to these kind of products. It will take years of updates like this before I start to believe that any renewed commitment will stick.

tedmiston 10y ago

> I got started with GV back when carriers were charging $0.25/each to send or receive texts What? Unlimited texting has been included in every phone plan I've ever had since the first iPhone or earlier, before Google Voice existed.

mwfunk 10y ago
Unlimited SMS has been the norm for a little while now (5ish years maybe?), but it wasn't too long ago that the lower tier plans for every mobile carrier in the US (not sure about elsewhere) had a per text charge, possibly after hitting a low monthly limit on free texts, or possibly with no free texts at all.
SamBam 10y ago
> every phone plan I've ever had since the first iPhone Exactly... You realize there was a time before then, right? In the mid 2000s, texts cost between 10-20c to send, unless you bought a bundled plan, which weren't actually that common then, and even then you were limited to usually 200 texts/mo. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/aboutus/mission/viewpoint/why-text-messaging-is-too-expensive/overview/text-messaging-ov.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/aboutus/mission/viewpoint...