Google’s Empire Expands into Phone Service

Whenever there is money to be made with something, Google swoops in and buys it all. That’s my observation now that it seems Google has just acquired GrandCentral.

GrandCentral is a cool service. I have not personally used it, but it claims to be able to combine all of your existing phone accounts into one managable line. Essentially, take the best features of web-enabled phone accounts (like Vonage) and centralize them and make it work with existing carriers. It really is very convenient. One of the things I love most about Vonage (and I use Vonage for my home office) is the fact that I can check voice mail through the web or via my email inbox. With GrandCentral, you can do that and more, apparently.

Google’s blog announced the acquisition 3 days ago now. According to Google:

We think GrandCentral’s technology fits well into Google’s efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users.

Perhaps it does. However, with the growing sense of unease about Google becoming big brother, this is going to get some attention. Personally, I’m not one of these big brother conspiracy folks. I don’t like it when I see a company grow and become successful only to have the mob try to take them down to size. It happened with Microsoft, Wal-Mart - now its starting with Google.

Perhaps Google will make GrandCentral free. Wouldn’t that be awesome. But, would that mean we start getting “relevant” audio ads in our voice mail box? Oh brother.

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