Google Voice should be launching soon. Some of us are getting quite impatient. (HowStuffWorks.com screenshot)

Google Voice is apparently about to launch, judging by the amount of chatter going on in the tech world right now. This morning I saw an article in PC World by Michael Scalisi that discusses the phone service, and the author seems to think that Google Voice could be a real game-changer.

When you sign up for Google Voice, it’ll let you choose a telephone number that will work with all your different telephones. You can assign certain callers to certain phones, or even group your contacts together to do the same thing. You can also personalize who gets what voicemail message. It’s even possible to have voicemail transcribed and sent to you by e-mail or text message.

Last week, J.R. Raphael wrote about reasons to consider Google Voice, which, in addition to some of those I mentioned from Scalisi’s article, include the ability to record calls and store them online. But he also had some things to consider that might give you pause about the service, chief among them privacy, which is a frequent concern voiced about Google products — especially those that store information in the cloud.

Others Raphael listed include the probability of advertising used to support the service, the possibility that the service isn’t too reliable, confusion on the part of the call recipient, who can’t figure out why you’re calling from different numbers and which to call back, and the simplest of all: having to give everyone your new phone number.

It’s easy to see now why the company that created the software (before Google purchased the company, of course) called it GrandCentral. I should point out that I could’ve been talking to you about my own thoughts on Google Voice, but I could never decide what phone number to choose and I lost my GrandCentral beta invitation. I’ve been waiting for Google Voice to open ever since. Perhaps this time I will just choose a number and go with it.

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