Google introduced Google Voice earlier this week. With this the line between the telephone and the computer will get blurred even more, is what Google is hoping and rightly so.
The new service sort of integrates age old phone features with Gmail, allowing users to store transcripts of voicemail phone messages in their email inbox and to find a specific nugget of information within a phone message as if browsing through a sea of emails.
Google, of late has been increasingly looking at new forays, away from its strong hold- Internet search – and this seems to be one more such initiative.
And it demonstrates the company's ability to meld various technologies into new products, even as the economic recession puts the future of certain Google projects in question.
Google Voice offers consumers a single phone number that can route incoming calls to home, office and cell phones.
The new version uses speech-recognition technology that Google developed for its Goog-411 telephone directory service, automatically transcribing voicemails into text. The transcribed messages can be forwarded as an email or SMS text message to a person's email inbox.
It is unclear how Google Voice will fit into Google's business model, which relies on advertisers to provide 97 percent of the company's revenue. The company has also ventured into the mobile software market, launching last year the Android mobile operating system.
Craig Walker, group product manager for Real Time Communications at Google, said that Google Voice, which will be available to certain users on Thursday and to the general public in the following weeks, provides another reason for people to spend more time on Google's various online properties, which benefits the company.
Google also makes money from selling enterprise versions of its applications to corporations. But Walker said the current priority is to make Google Voice a success as a free consumer product.
"There's all sorts of things we can do down the road," Walker said. "But right now we're just totally focused on getting the consumer product out."
The question to be answered is this: Are we complicating our lives more and more? Do a number of people all around the world – including us – adopt tech/gadgets just to keep up with the Joneses?
On a different plane, altogether, isn’t it time for a tech giant like Google to start looking at harnessing its humungous wealth and universally acknowledged tech prowess to address problems of less fortunate inhabitants of our planet? Isn’t it time for the Googles of the world to start worrying about and putting some serious effort towards the problems like disease, global warming, poverty………….
Worth pondering about. Write in your suggestions on how companies such as Google can help the world.
L.Ravichandran
ravi@chennaionline.com