Every phone needs Google Voice

I could make a philosophical argument against professional use of Google’s consumer-oriented mobile cloud services, but not with a straight face. The truth is, if it weren’t for Google, I couldn’t do my job. I run my own infrastructure for messaging and connectivity and always have, because while employers and ISPs come and go and change their habits, I need a constant, reliable presence, e-mail and IM addresses and URLs that anyone close to me can use to keep in touch.

I can’t manage my own telephony infrastructure. People inside my circle, as it were, have no one number that’s sure to reach me wherever I am. All of my landlines are digital: one ISDN, one VoIP (both with AT&T), and one UMA (with T-Mobile). But apart from choosing to pay the bill or not, I have no control over how these lines function. I can only forward them, and that can incur long-distance charges or eat wireless daytime minutes, and I can’t forward remotely or selectively. All told, I have eight phone numbers, including the mobile accounts loaned to me by carriers for use while I’m testing handsets (which is always). Which of these actually rings in my presence depends on where I am and which batteries are charged.

It shouldn’t be that way. Yes, messages sent to my One True E-mail Address are pushed to all of my mobile devices by my private infrastructure. Server-side filters on my Xserve elevate VIP e-mail to SMS and blast it out to my most-used mobile numbers. All but my iPhone are wired for instant messaging. But if someone needs to actually speak to me, it’s catch as catch can. I need one phone number that hunts me down, but I want remote and explicit control over how it does that, and who gets the priority treatment.

Glue by Google

I have seen and tried devices and services that do this. My home phone service is with AT&T U-Verse, and if I were an AT&T Wireless subscriber it would link my landline and mobile numbers with some online call blocking and selective forwarding controls. But if I dump U-Verse for DirecTV or cable, that’s gone. My private messaging infrastructure gives me the freedom to divorce service providers and bridge them together however I choose without brand barriers. I want the same thing for phone calls.

I would never have said, “Telco bridging? That’s a job for Google,” but then I didn’t expect Google Sync to have so transformative an effect on my life. All of the mobile devices I carry have matching contacts and calendar, and Google Sync is native to every handset I’m testing. Only Google is Swiss enough to get handset manufacturers and wireless operators to play together on Sync without trying to put their proprietary spin on it.

I hope that Google Voice is similarly widely embraced. It aims to do exactly what I want: Provide me with one phone number that rings all of the land and/or mobile endpoints I have registered with it. It has online call controls for blocking, selective forwarding, and “straight to voice mail,” and it can send a transcript of new voice mail as e-mail.

Pay with privacy

Google Voice is in invitation-only trials right now, and, sadly, I didn’t get in that first wave of invites. As is my practice to do, I don’t read others’ reviews of technology I haven’t used myself, so all I know of Google Voice is what Google has said and what I hope it will do. At present, Google Voice requires a client app that runs only on BlackBerry and Android. I think that Google should have offered Voice invites to T-Mobile G1 owners. We are among the few who actually pay for Google services.

I’ll patiently wait my turn, and I’m definitely OK with Google Voice’s price: a bit of privacy, which phone calls lost a long time ago. My voice mail, converted to text, along with caller ID records, will merge with my search history, Web usage tracking, YouTube selections, Gmail traffic, and Sync data to round out the corpus of knowledge that Google associates with my account, all with my permission. Do I care? Not really. My Google Voice outgoing message would warn callers that messages aren’t private.

You can’t live in a cloud and expect the safety and isolation of an underground bunker. Information that I care to keep secret travels by Federal Express or is accompanied by a handshake. I take for granted that my electronic correspondence, including phone calls, is up for grabs, so the sum of my nonsecrets is not that interesting. For me, having the nearest working phone, whatever and wherever that might be, ring when someone important calls is worth tossing more keywords and statistics on the pile that Google already associates with my identity. If they can make money with that, more power to them.