Google buys GrandCentral - unified phone numbers for all
July 3, 2007
GrandCentral is an innovative service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. If you’re like me, you have too many numbers to remember… GrandCentral consolidates all of them into one number. If you have multiple phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cell), you get one phone number that you can set to ring all, some, or none of your phones, based on who’s calling. This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job. My job offers a similar service where the number will follow you, but it doesn’t allow filtering who gets through to which phone. GrandCentral’s service also gives you one central voice mailbox. You can listen to your voicemails online or from any phone, forward them to anybody, add the caller to your address book, block a caller as spam, and a lot more. You can even listen in on voicemail messages from your phone while they are being recorded, or switch a call from your cell phone to your desk phone and back again. All in all, you’ll have a lot more control over your phones. Neat stuff. Since this is all web based, I assume that Google will attempt to monitize it by offering location aware advertising and services at some point in the future.
