The creeping shadow that is Google+ is about to touch one of the company’s most beloved products: Google Voice.
The company’s free VoIP phone-call, texting, voicemail and voicemail-transcription product will soon merge with the Google+ Hangouts apps on both iOS and Android, leading to the complete elimination of Google Voice as a separate service, according to 9to5Mac.
Devoted users of Google Voice are already expressing concern that the change could impact the product experience in unforeseen ways, as well as drive them into deeper integration with Google+ — even if they have no particular interest in Google’s social-networking service.
The rumored change is particularly interesting in the wake of Monday’s Google Hangouts outage, an episode that won’t likely inspire user confidence in a possible Google Voice move to Hangouts.
But despite the reported move taking some users by surprise, a key Google employee actually hinted at such a change over a year ago.
Posting on his Google+ page last May, Google+ product manager Nikhyl Singhal wrote, “Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.”
There’s no word on when the reported change will take place, but the upcoming Google I/O conference, just a couple of months away, could be a perfect stage on which to launch the next phase of Hangouts and Google+.
Source: Mashable