Tzah 2.0

I can’t believe I didn’t mention it in my last post. Google Voice is really great but it looks to me like it’s more focused on getting incoming calls than placing outbound calls (even though they’re free for now). A Google Voice user has : making a callback from his on-line account, calling back people who left a voicemail or manually typing the desired number.

Let’s have a closer look. The first way is simple and intuitive. Google Voice on-line page is based on Google’s famous UI principles thus making it easy to make the call. However, it still requires going on-line with your computer which is somewhat limiting. I didn’t hear about a mobile web version for the service like JAJAH’s mobile web, but I’m sure Google is working on it right now. The second way to make calls  is to callback a person back from a voicemail but that’s more a by-product for the voicemail service than a “legitimate” way to place calls.

The third way is to call your Google Voice number, press 2 and then manually type the destination number . That’s a big problem. Most of the mobile calls we make are from the phone’s address book or call log. Typing the number requires memorizing the number and the entire process takes time. The solution is either to have a number mapped to the destination, like JAJAH Direct service, or install a mobile plug-in. A mobile plug-in can be installed on most phones today and use the phone’s capabilities. On smart phones devices like iPhone/iPod, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android, Mobile VoIP calls can made thus saving you the cost of local call to your operator. In addition, the applications can intercept outgoing calls and route them through Google Voice. The advantage here is that the user doesn’t have to learn new tricks to make calls. She’ll still dial like she used to and the application will make the decision how to route the call. On features phone, which are still the majority of phones today, a J2ME plug-in can be installed to make calls. The plug-in could interface with the phone’s address book, allowing the user to choose a contact to dial to rather than typing the number manually. My guess is that Google will soon launch applications for mobile phones.

Google’s latest revolution and the usual suspect

By now, the news of has spread all over the web. Some celebrates the new revolution from the world’s web seminary, while other raise the usual concerns about invading your privacy. To the skeptics, I can only say, common! Nobody’s forcing you to use it. Google’s power is incredible but there’re still alternatives out there. Besides, free services in exchange for some level of privacy invasion already exist and gain popularity. (, being the most obvious example, but there’re others). Moreover, we already deliberately provide so much private information about ourselves in Facebook, Twitter, windows messenger status and others that privacy claims about big brother monitoring seems somewhat archaic.

One number, many friends

However, Google Voice is facing other challenges before it become globally  available and gain widespread use. First of all, Google Voices should help its users to spread their new number with their friends, family and colleagues. Perhaps a variation of service could help in that. Another related problem is that the numbers given to users are still only US. Even if the service becomes global, the given number is always local to the user. So, if I get a US number and my friend live in Austria, it will still cost a lot of money to make the international call from Austria to Germany. Of course, this is a common problem with all international calls. However, if Google has ambitions to make their service ubiquitous, they’d need to find a solution to this issue. JAJAH Direct can provide such a solution and at low-cost rates.

I’m sorry, what did you say?

One of Google Voice prominent service is it’s voicemail transcripts. It’s a great service, if, Google can indeed make fully automated transcriptions. Personally, I don’t see that happening in the near future. Google’s Speech-to-text services are and . Both services are limited to recognizing specific words out of a pre-defines list like Joe’s Pizza, economics, Texas. At this point, it’s not possible to fully transcribe complete voice mails without making mistakes, asking the user to repeat some words or have human intervention. A partial solution might be to make an educated guess about the nature of the voicemail content. If Google could assume a particular voicemail is of specifi context (entertainment, sports, business), it could reduce the number of transcription mistakes to a minimum. Since Google already has vast knowledge about its users habits and interest areas, that seems to be taken care of. Also, let’s not forget that transcription service should be able to understand different accents, languages, oral mistakes made by the user’s themselves,  nick names, voice interference and more before it become accurate. I know of only one such device that does a similar task, but, it will be in production state only 142 years form now.

One last thing

In addition to the above , Google has to overcome huge operational and regulatory challenges. Call termination, VoIP-related fraud, IP call routing and hosting are just few of issues any valuable VoIP company has to deal with. I wonder how much Google Voice is ready to cope with these issues, especially if it wishes to become a global service provider like JAJAH.