Google plans on charging for Google Voice…?
June 9th, 2010
All good things must come to an end…perhaps. While poking around in the HTML5 SMS data feed, I discovered that there is an attribute labeled “free_sms_remaining”. I don’t recall seeing this before, but none-the-less it’s there now. To verify my findings (before Google removes it), you can spoof your User-Agent to “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16” and navigate to https://www.google.com/voice/m/x?m=list&l=sms&o=0&lm=10 (I would sign-in to Google Voice before hand). Cheers!
UPDATE: Also found “free_minutes_remaining”.
Damn. If this does pan out, that’s going to be a serious bummer. I have completely integrated with Google (calendar, email, voice, contacts) and was planning on going with Android once my iPhone contract is up just so I could use Google Voice more seamlessly. If they pull this stunt, I’m going to go back to a “feature phone” and dump this smartphone stuff altogether.
Nothing to be alarmed with. I have been charging my google voice account since the beginning, allowing me to place international calls and text message for the cheap google voice rates.
This message only shows your credit remaining just like with skypeout international
This would be the biggest bait and switch of all time.
GV just recently stopped “free” International SMS, which was never officially supported. They plan on finding a way to bill for international SMS. See http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=284eb31b6a1834cc&hl=en for more info.
Has anyone seen this? Just popped up in my Google Reader. Very cool, look’s like a GV dialer is coming to Gmail:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-voice-to-integrate-with-gmail-as.html
When is this going to happen?
There is no ETA. This could never happen, but the evidence suggests otherwise. It does look like people would receive a modest 1000 calling minutes and 2000 SMS messages for free.
Where’s the “1000 calling minutes and 2000 SMS messages for free” coming from?
Damn man, we had it so good, using google’s services for free on my iPhone and screwing AT&T in the process. because i was getting texting thru GV free (which i absolutely needed since AT&T doesn’t work in my part of the neighborhood) i didn’t spend enough each month to qualify for an upgrade (Which i need since my 3gs was ejected on a roller coster)so i added a line june 3rd to stay with unlimited and plan to exchange for the new one later. GV made it easy since i didn’t have to give people new numbers. anyways considering that saved me $400 + $20 each month and it works where at&t doesn’t i guess i should owe google something. but still DAMN!!
I guess I can live with 2000 SMS messages… I’m assuming those numbers are based on a monthly bases….
I guess its fine as long as it doesn’t cost too much. It’s a great service.
Sean, is this going to stop you from improving the app?
@Mike No. Once I get another phone I’ll stop development (and no, my next phone isn’t an iPhone).
Once you have stopped development, will you make the code available or something so the project doesn’t just die? It’d be a shame for such a useful project to just die.
I could see tehuberkitten taking over
But I think Im most interested in seans next phone. The evo 4g is impressive, but its fuggin HUGE. If it wasnt so big, id seriously consider it
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. They bought Gizmo5 to create a viable alternative to Skype, and more tightly integrate voice with web and email. To think that it would be any different than their other products would be naive. They’ll have a free flavor that does much what it does now…acts as a dialer and voicemail/sms gateway. If you want to connect or accept calls from outside systems, you’ll need to pay for it or accept some sort of advertising subsidy.
Does GV+ work on 4.0? Thanks!
Is this app now dead then?
I’m having an issue that when I press voice mail or history the app closes.
Will it be an Android phone? I don’t think you’re going for Windows phone anyway.
Will you be releasing an update for iOS4? Would be great to have multitasking built in!
I doubt very much that that phrase – variable name really – means what you assume it means. I think you’re reading a lot onto it. IMHO.
Second seanbperioid’s question.
Does this work for iPhone 4, and if it does will it support background multitasking? Great product, but sounds like it will be discontinued which is a shame. Would be great for the code to be opensourced so other developers who still enjoy Apple (even with all the bs that comes with Apple) can get their hands dirty and keep the program up-to-date. Thanks!
I can’t see myself getting another iphone, android is the future.
Check out “iTim” application (supports google voice)
But iTim has nothing to do with a dialer app.
No but it is good for txting and it pushes to your phone….
Bashing on the iDroid forums got you all tied up? Are you still working on this project? If not, please pass it on to someone else.
People need to relax, the app works fine as it is now, no need to pass it on to anyone else
LIke any for profit company, Google is in this to make money. They can’t do this by providing GV for free. Of course they are going to start charging.
They are already making money through some calls that cost credits which is basically $