According to TechCrunch, Google is in the process of acquiring Grand Central. Immediately intrigued by what Google could possibly be up to now, and having never heard of “Grand Central,” I proceeded to investigate. After reading through their laundry list of features, I think that this acquisition will pave the way for a host of exciting new Google tricks – and with that oh-so-slick GoogleApps interface we all love hate enjoy using. In fact, I’m not exactly sure how I managed to miss this one when they rolled out their beta service last October.
What It Is, Yo?
According to the main page of the website, Grand Central claims to be the “new way to use your phones,” and lists some of its biggest features: one number for all your phones (home, work, cell), one voicemail box (with a ton of really neat tricks), and “So Many [other] Features, you won’t believe it.”
I have just signed up for the service and the feature list does make me drool bit. Try these highlights on for size:
- Call Screening – listen to voicemail as it is recorded (and pick up the phone if you wish)
- Caller Blocking
- Personalized Voicemail Greetings – you can have a different greeting depending on who calls
- Personalized Rings – different callers hear different ring tunes (MP3s you upload over the web)
- Visual Voicemail – if you have web access on your phone, you don’t need an iPhone to have visual, random access voicemail
And these are only a small subset of the features. I can imagine that Google plans on integrating these things into existing products, such as Gmail (you could get your email and voicemail, all in one place). At any rate, I think the service is pretty cool. I can’t really review it at the moment, because I just signed up. The only difficulty is that to fully use the service, you must get all your friends to call a new number – and I happen to like my current phone number, and don’t feel like getting everyone to change. However, it will be fun to play with!
Fun bonus: you can get a number in any almost any area code you fancy…