Google prepares to open up Google Voice

It appears that Google has reserved a million phone numbers from Level 3 for use with Google Voice. This is a very good indication that the company will be opening up its doors for business in the near future.

Google Voice will change the way you send/receive phone calls, listen to voicemail, read text messages, etc. When you subscribe to Google Voice, the only phone number that matters is your Google Number -- it will forward calls/texts to the phones of your choosing by following certain rules around time of day and contact groups. In addition, it also has a wealth of powerful features that let you do things like listen in on messages and "pick up the line" on a different phone or device without dropping the call.

Google Numbers are currently only available for American area codes. There's not much stopping you from setting up an account if you want one though -- however, forwarding to foreign phone numbers simply doesn't work anymore (it used to).

This extremely powerful service is free -- even though it seems like a pricey venture that is almost certainly going to be losing a ton of money out of the gate. Calls to american numbers from your Google number are free -- international calls do have a per-minute rate which you can buy credits for.

Do you have a Google Voice account yet? What do you think of it?