The Rotten Word

Credit: Malabooboo

UPDATE 2: Cecil pointed out in the comments that the conditional call forwarding Sprint is implementing will mean that free forwarding will be applied to any busy or unanswered calls. This allows for the specific use Google is offering, but is not exclusive, and is open to all users on this conditional basis. The Google page about the change is correct, I just misread it. Thank you Cecil, for the clarification.

UPDATE: Google and Sprint are partnering to eliminate the $0.20 per minute call-forwarding charge, but only for calls forwarded to Google Voice. The change should be complete by “mid-November 2009.” Read Google’s official announcement for details.

Lifehacker has a post about Google’s new Voicemail service. The new service will let you use all of the cool features of Google Voice (message delivery via email or SMS; voice-to-text transcription; different greetings for different contacts, and more) with your current phone number.

This will allow you to maintain a consistent voicemail experience for both yourself and those who are calling you. Those who heed your request that they use your Google Voice number and those who don’t will both get the same greetings, and you’ll be able to process their messages in the same way.

You can also hang on to all of your voicemail. So, the next time that friend of yours says that they never leave obnoxious drunken messages, you can forward them a transcription of one of their more colorful  messages. Not too shabby, eh?

Click through for information on the “catch” that may prevent or delay your switch, and for Google’s video introduction of the service.

The catch is the fact that Google achieves this through call forwarding.

This means that if your plan doesn’t include call forwarding, you may be charged by your carrier if you use the new Google feature. For example, Sprint will charge me $0.20 per minute under my Everything Data plan  if I sign up for Google Voicemail today via the number I use with my Palm Pre. So, you may want to check with your service provider on pricing before diving in.

Luckily for me and all the other Sprint customers out there, it looks like Google and Sprint are discussing a solution that wouldn’t involve those per-minute charges:

So, hopefully I’ll be able to try it out sometime soon. But, for now, I’ll be keeping those two dimes in my pocket every minute.

Finally, Google’s video introduction to Google Voicemail:

[ Via Google, through Lifehacker ]