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Comment by post_break | Hacker News Reader

Been with Google Voice since it was Grand Central. It's been a wild ride and I'm waiting for Google to kill it entirely. Hangouts was so close. Had SMS and everything. Was only a few features away from becoming a pseudo iMessage for android, then in typical fashion they have gone and done all of this.

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Same. Been loving Google Voice / Grand Central for allowing me to both call and text from any device, even through all the rough patches (e.g. no MMS support, losing group texts). My wife cracked her screen and is looking at getting it fixed but the loss of her phone is making her hesitate. I'm tempted to get her on Google Voice but the roughness and concern over its future is why I hesitate.

I'm going to miss Hangouts Integration. It was great accessing GV directly from GMail.

You can still access Google Voice via gmail in the right sidebar.

Unless it’s only a G Suite feature?

Pretty sure that's G Suite/Workspace only. Also, doesn't that only handle voice features? I don't see SMS in that popout.

> Unless it’s only a G Suite feature?

It's GSuite only currently, but I wouldn't be surprised if they brought it to consumer when they actually retire the Hangouts integration.

Enable it in options.

I ditched Voice about 2 years ago and just gave everyone my direct # because I started experiencing some quirks, and was afraid they'd kill it.

In fairness I only started with it originally because 1) it seemed like a cool product and 2) at the time cell # portability was much harder.

It really doesn't look like they'll kill it since it's a paid Google Workspace add-on[0], but they very well might do to it what they did to Google+ (keep premium offering, close free offering).

0: https://cloud.google.com/voice#voice_1:~:text=Pricing%20plan...

Same. They finally offered me the ability to get off of Hangouts and onto their messenger through Google Fi which I pay for. I've been waiting years for this and it's been a good experience.

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