Goodbye GrandCentral, Hello Google Voice!

In a blog post late tonight on the official Google Blog is details of how Google is shaking off the dust that has settled on GrandCentral, the service they acquired way back in July 2007. GrandCentral provides users with voice features traditionally associated with business IP PBXs, such as a single virtual phone number that rings to multiple of your other phone numbers such as home, work, mobile, call screening, and web accessible voicemail. The free service is wildly popular with its existing users, but has languished since the Google acquisition and subsequent termination of new account signups.

According to the Blog post Google is planning a relaunch of the service under the Google Voice moniker. Along with the relaunch it looks like they will be adding some killer features, such as voicemail transcription, low-priced international calls, integration with Goog-411, and archival/indexing of all of your SMS messages. This all comes delivered on a new Google-ized user interface. The voicemail transcription is particularly interesting considering that there are existing services our there that charge a fee and use a human to transcribe your messages and send them to you.

Google has promised to roll out the service first to existing GrandCentral users in the next few days, and then to allow sign ups for new users. In fact if you point your web browser to http://voice.google.com you are greeted by a traditional Google looking login page, except it is branded for the new service. However, despite the fact that the homepage says Google Voice is open for GrandCentral, it is not, you are greeted by a Server Error after attempting to login, and the Learn More link at the bottom of the page takes you to non-existent Google Support pages.

As a current GrandCentral User, I am stoked about this news, as I was fearing that Google was going to let the service die much as it did with Dodgeball. I will update this blog post as I hear more.