Google Voice is a service that lets you give out one phone number that people can use to ring all of your phones. Only want your work phone to ring from 9 to 5? You can adjust a setting for that. Want to be able to screen calls and send some numbers direct to voicemail? You can do that too. And want to receive automatic text transcripts of each voicemail message in your email inbox? That’s enabled by default.
The only catch is that Google Voice has been in private beta for the past year. Sure, over a million people have requested and received invitations, but if you couldn’t manage to snag one you were out of luck.
Today Google has finally opened Google Voice to the public, which means that anyone in the United States can sign up for an account.
If you’re still not sure exactly what Google Voice is, or why you’d want yet another phone number in your life, check out the video after the break.
