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What would you say if a company asked you if you’d like to have all of your home, work and cell phone calls, all your text messages, all your conference calls, all your voicemail -- pretty much anything you say or type into a phone -- ALL of it -- go thru their 3rd party service? You, like me, would probably say; Thanks but no thanks.

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But wait. What if they were going to give you a bunch of really cool features and capabilities in the process?  For free? Oh, and what if the company were Google?  Now you might be saying; Oh yeah?  Well... what kind of cool features?  I would.

Google Voice is the new ‘Coolest Thing Ever’ coming out of Google.  Basically, what they are doing is allowing you to centralize your multiple phone numbers (work/home/cell etc).  In the process they have come up with all kinds of handy tools and features that give endusers more control over their telecom than they have ever had before.

Essentially, here’s how it goes down.  You get a new Google assigned phone number.  Then, you route all of your other phone numbers thru that number.  So, your office phone, your work phone, your home phone - whatever. Google voice will allow your calls to selectively ring thru to any of the destination handsets you choose.  It really is a handy idea in concept.

Beyond that, Voice adds all kinds of cool little bonus features for example:

- You can selectively ring calls thru to multiple destinations.
- You can selectively block and screen calls
- You can send, receive forward and store SMS text messages
- Check your voicemail online, read it via email or text (you can even forward it)
- You can create personalized voicemail messages per contact
- You can group your contacts and manage their preferences on a group level
- Conference calling, call recording, call switching, 411 info -- all that kind of thing is in there.


Now, rephrase my original question and substitute Google for ‘a company’. Do you still flatly refuse? I’m thinking a lot of people will just say “Oh, it’s Google” and after that, “Well sure, that sounds fantastic! Wow. Man, Google is cool aren’t they?” So, my question is:  why is that?

Yes, Google Voice is cool.  Yes, I have signed up. Yes, I realize using it means everything I use it for becomes more data for Google to ‘organize’.  But I might do it anyway and I won’t be alone.

The way I see it, Google Voice users will be made up of three groups of people:
Group 1: Realize how much data the service gives Google access to, but trusts Google enough that it isn’t a concern.  These folks also elected Obama and only eat tuna clearly labeled dolphin safe. 

Group 2: Realize the data issue but don’t care, because they realize their ‘data’ is all over the place anyway - Google might as well have some (more) too. These are also the  people who told their classmates about Santa in the 3rd grade.

Group 3: No idea or thought paid to the matter of their data and who sees it. This the reality TV set.  As long as the Bachelorette is still on Monday night... they’re good to go.

Add those guys up and Google Voice will do just fine.  Even some of the people that refuse to use over privacy issues will trickle in after a while.  Peer pressure and the whole, ‘man I wish my phone did that’ factor is not to be lightly discounted (just ask Apple).

Google Voice does lots of neat stuff...  Sure you give up a little in the way of data privacy, but hey... selective call block?  How cool is that? I can go to the lake and have my office line ring to my cell?  Well that certainly has it’s practical applications.  We are, most of us, used to trading a little bad for a little good. So what’s it going to be for you? Are you Pro or Con on the Google Voice thing?  If you are, which of my groups do you fit into, or are you a group unto your own?