Call-the-Cloud

Lots of excitement as Google finally unveiled the new version of GrandCentral, a company they bought almost 2 years ago. A number of people were starting to wonder if anything would become of the service that gained rapid popularity and rave reviews prior to the Google acquisition. Well, it looks like the wait was worth it. Techcrunch gushes: “It’s Very, Very Good.”

I absolutely love the concept and I was an early user (and managed to get a coveted “415″ area code number). Grandcentral stopped handing out new numbers after the acquisition, and still hasn’t resumed. TechCrunch reports that people have bidding up to $650 on eBay for GrandCentral numbers.

It’s still in transition

I just logged in at the grandcentral.com and it looks exactly the same:

At voice.google.com today you see:

But you can’t actually sign-in. They have quite a few new features coming which you can read about here. I’m definitely excited and looking forward to using it.

Why I’m not a user

Grandcentral did everything it claimed but I never became a regular user because: 1) I can’t get a Canadian number, and I don’t want to impose long distance charges on my Canadian contacts to reach me.  2) When I call, the outbound number displayed doesn’t match my GrandCentral number.

On the first item, this problem is not unique. Many similar services don’t extend into Canada. It’s still hard to get an Canadian Skype-In number for example. Ooma has the same problem and when I spoke to some senior people at Ooma last year they cited complicated regulatory issues (including a word I hadn’t heard before: “homologation“. Always like learning a new word). I don’t expect Grandcentral/Google Voice to address this any time soon and I don’t hold it against them — the extra hassle is probably not worth it in the early stage of the game.

That 2nd item is a bigger issue because it effects everyone, not just Canadians. Our mental model for interacting with phones is that “if you called me from number X” I can hit redial to call you back. (Or I can store that number in my address book for later.) To fix this we either have to change user behavior (tough) or spoof the caller-ID (technically doable but quasi-legal). The only Voice 2.0 company I know of that has solved this problem is Truphone, which does transmit your Truphone number as to the destination.

Spam Call Blocking

One of GrandCentrals’ features is blocking spam calls, which takes me to the second half of this post’s headline. Below is the first page of my current GrandCentral inbox. Every single one of those calls is spam (something about a car warranty), so that’s one feature that definitely needs some tuning. [Update: Consumerist has some coverage on the “car warranty robocalls” here.]

Adopting a new number is still the big barrier

I’m sure Google will tune and polish that feature as well as the others. But regardless, one barrier to adoption that will remain: you will have to adopt a new phone number, and train everyone you know to start calling you on that number.

Another approach to getting GrandCentral-like features that does not require a new number, is being pioneered by Skydeck. They’ve built some very impressive technology which lives both in the cloud and on your mobile device (also, sadly, not available in Canada).

On a closing note, people often ask me about how Fonolo compares to GrandCentral, er, Google Voice. Simple: Google Voice is about managing your inbound calls. Fonolo is about smarter outbound calls. In that sense they are very complimentary.