Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now | Hacker News Reader

Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now

techcrunch.com

35 pointspx20 comments

I completely agree. The service has been horrible. I tried to make few international calls and none of them went through. It just worked flawlessly with Skype.

Comn Google, you seriously needs to get this right! I don't want to pay twice the fee to Skype

Are your problems just on the international side? I've been having some issue where my mobile rings forever before going to voicemail and then occasionally doesn't capture whatever message is left.

I haven't really tried calling US phone numbers. I called maybe twice and it went fine.

I don't have the problem you are having. With me, I never hear the mobile ring when calling and worse it charged me.

You have to configure your phone number to direct your VM to GV or else it goes to your carrier's VM box or limbo.

I demand my money back.

This is partly why I've stayed away from GV. It seems like it could be useful but it also feels too good to be true. I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm sure they'll fix the reliability problems but I'm still paranoid about security/privacy. I decided to let other people handle the post-beta beta period this time around.

This never felt "too good to be true" for me, because this isn't the first time I've been through it.

When I first moved away from home in 2006, I spent a few weeks paying a ton for long distance phone cards just to keep in touch with my family back home. I soon discovered that Skype was offering this same "computer-to-landline" service for free until the end of the year.

I realize that it's not 100% the same as what Google is doing now, but it's close, and Skype seemed a lot more stable to me then than this post would have me believe Google is doing now (I haven't tested the new service yet).

I tried to make a call to my cell phone, it rang for 60 seconds but my cell never rang. Then I made a call to my Vonage phone, it rang right away. Then I made another call to my cell, it rang right away.

Not sure what this means, perhaps they have some kind of special SIP routing setup?

Oh gosh! What's wrong with Google lately? They don't seem to be capable of making one really stable system. I don't know if it's all FUD, or Google has lost its ways... but I want the old Google back!!! :)

Installing the Google Voice extension caused kernel panics on my machine every time I loaded Gmail. What a pain as it took several hours to figure out the root cause.

If an extension in your web browser, triggered by a webpage causes a kernel panic, you have something far more concerning going on. A browser extension is not at fault here, even if it's helping trigger.

I would tend to agree but I have no idea what it may be. My system has been super stable since I got it 18 months ago. When I started having the problem I did a clean install of SL and as soon as I reinstalled Google Voice and navigated to Gmail, kernel panic. I swapped back the original HD and memory sticks and same problem.

What else could it be??

Yeah, I've been having problems, but I doubt that Google is going to give up on this service, and fortunately I do not use it as my primary number (yet).

"From what I’m hearing this isn’t a short term surge issue, either."

I'd love to see/hear who the author heard this from, when and where.

it works pretty well for me. i've recently made a lot of lengthy calls to australia and india, and within the US.

"Hot Mess"? Maybe if you're Arrington testing (and bragging about) a super beta feature (number porting). I've used Google Voice for over a year now. I haven't had call or text sync problems for probably 6 months. It's actually remarkably stable for what I imagine is at work.

I didn't realize the muted caller issue was google voice related. I thought it was a hardware problem with my N1. Although it had happened repeatedly even after a factory reset. I ended up getting a new phone by warranty swap and the day the new phone came my N1 started working again. Haven't had any issues with the new one though so who knows.

It's not strictly a Google Voice issue. It has to do with the way background applications handle sound on Android. Other apps can cause the problem too. It's also the same root cause of random music playback bug. For example if an audio app is paused in the background plugging in a USB cable, which would normally generate a sound, also causes playback to restart. I believe it's a bug that needs to be fixed in the applications and not really an OS problem. Hopefully by now most apps have fixed it.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8038

I agree, I have been using it to call to india, and its better than most of the competitors, also I made few calls within US and they were much better than AT & T.

NUMBER PORTING IS COMING?! HOT DIGGITY!

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