Comments on: Google’s Forgotten Acquisition: The GrandCentral Wild Card

By: Digitalnomad

Digitalnomad — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:28:25 +0000

The sleeping giant has awoken. Get ready for Google Voice. No longer a wild card. IMO

By: Joe Bloe

Joe Bloe — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:30:28 +0000

Where have we seen this before…

Except Google’s just cutting to the chase:

Embrace, extinguish.

By: Lee W.

Lee W. — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:50:29 +0000

So what happened?

I have had a GC beta account for a year.. it works well. No complaints only praise… but there has been zero from them on any progress or lack thereof.

It looks like they have frozen access to new numbers and there has not been any activity on their blog since April 2008.

Are they dead or are they quietly planning the overthrow of the known universe?

By: searchforit

searchforit — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:26:54 +0000

GrandCentral was reportedly acquired for $45 million. Take a look in blog land for the exact change amount. Big, big acquisition.

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:46:42 +0000

I use Grandcentral for my home number. I would like to use it as my only number. Here are my top ten requests from Google for Grandcentral.

http://geekideas.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-good-grandcentral-suggestions.html

By: eYeks

eYeks — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:12:52 +0000

I’ve continued to use GC for over a year – got my number after it was inside Google – one of the lucky few who got a number before they shut out new users.

Not sure if you have noticed – something is afoot – the legal guys have been talking to the GC developers telling them that they cannot make Click-to-call free. In the early days, we had to ‘purchase’ outbound calling credits for zero $. Then it went away. A few days back, I was presented with a dialog asking to get more free credits with a click along with an almost apologetic note explaining.

This is the first sign of life I have observed on the GC page in ages!
\eYeks

By: Phil Seyer

Phil Seyer — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:55:42 +0000

Another phone company to keep your eye on is Ribbit — especially if you are developer. They claim to be silicon valley’s first phone company.

http://www.ribbit.com/platform/

Ribbit was recently acquired by BT.

Phil Seyer

By: Josh Fialkoff

Josh Fialkoff — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:08:00 +0000

Great post!

I’ve been using GrandCentral for a year or so and I totally agree with you. Check out this post I just wrote on GrandCentral: http://www.nooozeguy.com/google-grand-central/. I’d love to hear feedback from your readers.

Thanks,
Josh

By: Ben Wood

Ben Wood — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:53:01 +0000

I’ve been using GrandCentral for a while now. I was also one of the lucky ones that got an account before the company was acquired by Google. I used it for a while and loved it.. but began having problems when people tried to send text messages to me at my GrandCentral number. I learned that text messages hit a dead end when sent to a GrandCentral number. I hope this is one of the things that Google will fix when they release whatever new features they must have been working on all this time.

Great post by the way…

By: Benji

Benji — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:40:26 +0000

This must have something with why I can’t create a Label called ‘voicemail’ in Gmail — I get an error that it’s a ‘reserved label name’ … hmmmmm :)

By: gadget guy

gadget guy — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:01:04 +0000

wait and see within 6 months of launch we’ll have more mobile applications than what we have today

By: jlo

jlo — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:13:48 +0000

I was fortunate enough to get a grand central number before they were bought out, and subsequently locked down. I love it, it’s like pushing your phone. I can give out one number and know that no matter if I am at home work or on vacation can still receive my phone numbers. It is also great to get my voicemail over email.

By: Dean Grove

Dean Grove — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 23:58:51 +0000

Wonder how that affects the G1 in other countrys, specially here in Germany. I am pretty sure that it would be against the Law if Tmobile or Google would remove the ability to use VoIP here.

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:53:41 +0000

Great story! :)

Regarding SMS – GrandCentral officially announced back in April of 2007 (!) that SMS support IS coming. link: http://blog.grandcentral.com/?p=109#comment-7414

Let’s hope for GC release once Android is launched

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:34:09 +0000

“Where and when will GrandCentral fit into the picture, if at all?”

As soon as it supports text messaging, MMS, etc.. Right now most people will not want to give out their GC number because you can’t send text messages to it.