Google Voice: Big Plans for 2010
Posted by Jesse Ward on Monday, January 4, 2010 · 
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Google is “just scratching the surface” with Google Voice, Bradley Horowitz, VP of product management, said to eWeek.com last week. In fact, the Internet giant plans to move aggressively next year to further blur the line between telephony and the Internet.
Google is gearing up to compete with Cisco and Microsoft in the unified communications market. As you might remember, Google recently acquired Gizmo5. The soft phone provider operates on open standards, and enables free VoIP calls over the Internet and inexpensive calls to landline and mobile phones.
“What we’re trying to do with telephony is give people a seamless experience that frees up their telephony communication from the silos where it’s lived for the last decade,” Horowitz said. “Voicemail, my contacts, all of those things have been segregated from the rest of my Web experience. We have big plans to do a better job.”
“Voicemail transcription, inbox integration and threaded SMS are fantastic features, but we’re really just scratching the surface,” Horowitz continued. “Gizmo5 gives us talent and talent technology. They have specific tech and skills in further integrating telephony with devices and desktop and Web-based computing. We want to make sure you’re communication is available to you irrespective of where you are at, what device you have in your pocket, etc.”
As of late 2009, the invitation-only Google Voice app had grown to 1.419 million users, 40% or 570,000 of whom use the service every day.
Read more of the eWeek interview.
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