I have been a Google Voice (GV) user for years. It's been an indispensible product for me. I have the app on my Android phone, the plugin on my Chrome browser, and text/voicemail forwarding on Gmail. I don't even know my own cell phone number by heart because GV is my main number.
The only problem over the years has been the inability to send or receive MMS messages. MMS is like SMS, only much richer. It's used to send photos or carry on group texting. In case of GV most MMS messages to/from a variety of carriers would just go into a black hole without even a warning. That's been an annoying fact over the years and I have never known who is at fault there. My assumption is that carriers have refused to work with GV because of some competitive paranoia.
There have always been some rumors that GV is relegated to some corner office, perhaps much like Google Reader before its eventual demise or Feedburner. Although the latter product is still very much alive, albeit unloved.
Now comes the news that GV has been given MMS capability with pretty much all carriers, save unfortunately the biggest one, Verizon. Still, it's a shot of confidence for people like me who appreciate GV and have been long-time users.
I tested GV MMS via AT&T and indeed it works well. And yes, the Verizon test failed. Think it's time for Verizon to shake the irrational fear and get on with this.
Give a few Sats