Google buys Grand Central

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) bought telephone number company Grand Central. The startup has a clever suite of features that allows a customer to have only one phone number. All calls to any other numbers that a person has are routed to the "master" phone.

The service seems clever enough. Many people have a cell, office, and home number. Working all calls through a common one seems to make some sense. But, in a day and age where phone devices store an almost unlimited set of phones numbers that can be easily accessed, the value of the service appears a bit thin.

The larger question is what Google wants with the company. As Google moves further into providing search services for handsets, can a phone number service actually help it? Or, is the accuracy of the search function, both of the internet and local information, the reason that consumers want to have "Google mobile"?

It may be that Google is a company with too much money and too many projects. That is certainly an observation that has been made before. If some of its new products and acquisitions don't work out, it hardly matters. A few will probably bear fruit, and that is enough. Grand Central would seem to be a long shot.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.