Clark has been a longtime customer of
Google Voice, dating back to the days when the free service was an independent upstart called Grand Central.
Google Voice today offers users a single number for their cell, home phone, office phone and more to ring on. Other features include free voicemail, call forwarding and conference calling.
It also offers free unlimited long distance calling in the United States and cheap calls
overseas. This could be very beneficial for someone with a monopoly landline who has to pay
for expensive long distance calls.
With the voicemail feature, you're able to listen in as voicemails are being left and pick
up in the middle of the call -- just like you would with an answering machine. You can also
have voicemails automatically converted into a text message.
Basically it's a whole lot of functionality wrapped up in one package!
The most common gripe people Clark has heard is that people were upset when Google was rationing out the service through an
invitation-only system. While Clark recently discussed
an option that would allow
college students to move to the front of the invitation process, that information is now no
longer valid.
As of June 22, Google Voice is now
open to everyone with no
restrictions.
Of course, Google Voice does have competitors out there in the marketplace.
Ribbit Mobile is, by the consumer champ's own admission, a better service than Google Voice when it comes to voice-to-text transcription. Ribbit offers a comparable suite of services and is also free for now.