Common misconception. Google voice is a service to sit between your phone and your caller. You call my GV line, which then, based on the rules set up, calls my phone. Google optionally fakes the caller ID to make it look like the original caller is calling you, not Google.
Other than on Google's internal end, there is no VoIP. It calls you over the standard phone system and uses your minutes. Google Voice apps available for smartphones simply intercept. Your outgoing calls and send them through Google to make it look to your callers like you are calling out through your Google Voice number. This uses your minutes as well. ( it is done one of two ways, depending on the app: 3rd party services send a web request to google which then calls you back and then calls your other party. Google official apps call some special unique phone number that Google has assigned to every one of your contacts. Your phone actually calls this pseudorandom number which, when you call from a number registered to your Google Voice account, tells google who to call. They have an astonishingly large number of these numbers in various under utilized area codes. ) Google recently purchased a company called Gizmo5 that provided SIP translation for Google Voice. The service has been closed for registrations for a while, but I am lucky to have an account and I use it with an ATA box to a cordless phone in my house. I still have to initiate the call from the web site, as its the 3rd party call in method, but it works well most of the time. Google Talk's phone call feature (inside Gmail) is quite unrelated to Google Voice. It calls out from a different number and will only loosely connect with your Voice account. You can add it as a phone in Voice, but it's not perfectly seamless and it's obvious to me they are not highly interconnected. You can't make a call inside the Google Voice webpage either. The web page is quite simple and is mainly for account management and sending SMSes out and in from your Voice number. Google's purchase of Gizmo5 will hopefully lead to more official SIP and VoIP features, but right now those features are simply hacks for those who happened to get a Gizmo5 account before they went into lockdown. Michael Potts On Oct 8, 2010 7:04 PM, "Whit Hansell" <[email protected]> wrote: > Just wondering if anyone has used google voice w. linux and what you > think of it or have heard about it one way or the other. > > Just heard a brief bit about it on Clark Howard show. > > TIA > Whit > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 > RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml > Unsubscribe [email protected] >
