Grand Central, not quite the Google Phone
July 9th, 2007 by Simon HeseltineGoogle, Google, Google, was how Chris Boggs recently started one of his articles. He talked about Google attempting to invade every aspect of our lives, and he was right. Of course they have search, they’ve moved into the business documents business, they have social media sites, email, analytics, etc, and today they’ve purchased an email security firm. In the offline world they’ve been making moves, with varying degrees of success, in TV and print advertising, and now they’re even forwarding your phones calls. Yes, with Grand Central Google allows people to reach you no matter which phone you’re near. The first thing you have to do is get an invite, such as one of those being given out by Lee Odden. Then you log into the system, and tell it where you’d like a phone number from. It doesn’t have to be local, you can pick one from anywhere in the US, you can pretend to be exotic with an Albany phone number, even though you’re in Wichita. Of course, local charges wouldn’t apply. The system gives you a choice of 5 numbers, with the option of generating another set, should you so wish.
Once you’ve entered all your information, you simply enter your work number, your home number, and your cell number (there is an option for the system to disregard your home number during regular business hours). When someone calls your new number each of your phones rings. You pick the closest one to you, and answer it. The system even nicely tells you who is calling and gives you the option to not answer their call (just in case you really do want to hide from them). It seems like a nice system, and the best part is that it’s free. As to whether it will stay that way, other products that they’ve put out there have, so who knows?
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I find this service quite funny. Not for any reason other than while spending my many years in the telco industry at MCI (then MCI/WorldcoN) We worked on many products and services that were – at that time – a bit beyond user needs. MCI One was a product that was very similar – you had one number and a feature called “find me, follow me” (however, I think it should have been “follow me, find me”) This service- back in the mid ’90′s failed miserably. Glad to see that another attempt at this is being made in a day and age when it is realistic that it would be necessary.