Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) just keeps on rolling out products that are keen on competing with established industries. The internet search giant now wants you to replace your cellphone number with only your Google Voice number. That's right -- replace your cellphone number and voicemail service with the Google Voice service and have all those voicemails transcribed to you and emailed or texted to yourself.In other words, Google is wanting to cater to the market that already has a wireless number (or any number) and does not want to change numbers and notify all contacts -- they just want the Google Voice service with existing numbers. Do you receive online and searchable voicemail? How about automated voicemail-to-text transcription? Or, custom voicemail greetings for all callers? Those are the features Google Voice offers that are already offered in some form by many traditional telecom providers -- and they are making Google a telecom operator whether it realizes it or not.
Just because Google uses the open internet to perform all this magic (instead of telecom facilities and such) does not mean it may stealthily slide under existing telecom regulations -- a fact AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T) is fast to point out. All that Google has done here is make an existing wireless (or wireline) number forward to Google when unanswered instead of the voicemail or answering service from the customer's carrier operator. It's no different that forwarding your calls anywhere else, right? Does that really make Google a telecom operator?
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