Google to Offer “One Number for Life”

By Greg McNevin

July 6, 2007: The Google juggernaut is gathering steam by the day now, not to mention increasingly moving outside its core online business. This was evident again this week with the company picking up VOiP provider GrandCentral Communications for an undisclosed sum.

GrandCentral Communications is a Silicon Valley start-up that enables multiple phone numbers and voice mailboxes to be brought under a single umbrella account, accessible from anywhere via the web or any phone.

Rumours have been swirling about the possibility of Google moving into the VOiP world for a while, and now they have been confirmed by Google product manager Wesley Chan on the company blog.

“We're pleased to announce that we have acquired GrandCentral Communications, a company that provides services for managing your voice communications,” wrote Chan earlier this week.

Chan says GrandCentral enables those with multiple phone numbers to sign up for a single, static number that they keep forever. When contacts call this number they can redirected to all, one or none of one’s phones. This enables business calls to be routed to a work phone no matter what office one is in, calls to be switched from a mobile to a desk phone and back again, or unwanted calls to be screened out automatically.

“This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job,” he says. “The 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…All in all, you'll have a lot more control over your phones.”

Having a single number will no doubt be a lifesaver for road warriors skipping between home and work phones, mobiles, blackberrys and VOiP services, but Google being Google, it will be interesting to see what other services it integrates with the technology, and what it takes from it.

For now, Chan says that GrandCentral's technology “fits well into Google's efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information.”

A limited invitation-only beta is on the cards in the near future, with invitations going on to those with a US phone number who sign up for a GrandCentral beta account.

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