Google ringing up GrandCentral?

How many phone numbers do you have? Too many? A rumor currently circulating has Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) shopping for an e-company, GrandCentral, that can help you with that problem.

GrandCentral is a very cool, free service, accessed via the internet, that provides you one phone number that consolidates all of your phone numbers and routes calls to the device of your choice. With this number, you can block nuisance callers, listen in on their messages as they leave them (sneaky, eh?), and receive e-mail or text message notification that you've received a message.

It can automatically route Grandma's calls to your home phone, client calls to your cell, and calls from your good-for-nothing nephew to your fax machine. It also provides a voice mail box that will store messages in perpetuity and allow you to post them to your blog. (That could provide some interesting listening.)

This app seems like a perfect fit for Google, with its cross-platform features. As a one-stop shop for telecommunications, it would integrate beautifully into Gmail and Google's version of Instant Messenger. And since the company has been cruising Silicon Valley looking for investors, the time seems ripe for such a deal.

If you are interested in signing up for a GrandCentral account, you might want to run the available numbers through Phonespell to find one that produces an easily-remembered word or word combination.