Google Voice goes public with FREE OPEN INVITATION

 A little over a year ago, Google released an early preview of Google Voice, a web-based platform for managing communications. This product introduced one number to ring all your phones (landline, mobile, VOIP, fax, pager), voicemail that works like email with transcribed copies of incoming voicemails sent to your phone..., free calls and text messages to the U.S. and Canada, low-priced international calls and more—the only catch was you had to request and receive an invite to try it out. I was lucky enough to be in that first wave of testing. Today, after lots of testing and tweaking, Google Voice has been opened to
the public, no invitation required.

Over the past year, Google introduced a mobile web app, an integrated  voicemail player in Gmail, the ability to use Google Voice with your existing number and more. Over a million people are now actively using Google Voice, and many of the features released over the past year (like SMS to email and the Chrome extension) came as a result of user suggestions.

If you haven’t yet tried Google Voice, you really should. Weigh it against what you currently pay out your nose for, and see for yourself how convenient consolidating your phone lines can be.

(portions excerpted from Google, with edits)