Nice move, GC guys!

From an e-mail:

because it ensures that not only will we have the resources to continue to bring you even more innovative communications features down the road, but that we will be able to continue to offer you the service, with many features for free, for a long time to come.

We started GrandCentral because we wanted to create a service that puts users in control of their voice communications and not the other way around. As you have discovered, with GrandCentral you get all of your phone calls through just one number that never changes and you can link and ring up to six phones when somebody calls you. But that’s just the start. You can set different rules for each caller (some ring all your phones, others can go straight to voicemail), create personal voicemail greetings for each of your callers, and even check your voicemail on the web with all of your messages in just one inbox. We’ll even save your messages for as long as you want.

Have you ever tried to save a message on your cell phone but it gets deleted after a few weeks? Or have you wished you could hear your voicemail messages while they are being left like you used to be able to do on your old home answering machine? Have you ever been on a call on your cell but wished you could switch it to your desk or home phone? How about having a filter to weed out unwanted telemarketer calls automatically? With GrandCentral you are in control and can do all of this, and this is just the beginning. As part of Google we’ll be able to create even more unique features to let you control your calls the way you want.

Many of you probably have questions about what happens to the service now that we’re a part of Google. We’ve created an FAQ–which will answer most of your questions, but a couple of highlights:

Our priority now is to ensure that you, our current beta users, continue to have a great user experience. While we scale the service, we are moving to an invitation-only model for new users. If you’re a registered user today, you can invite five of your friends to join. In addition, GrandCentral will continue to remain entirely free as we work with Google to add capacity, work out any kinks, fix bugs, and add a ton more great features. We hope you continue using the service and send us feedback about anything we can do to improve it.

Thanks for your support so far. We’ll always work to earn it.

Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, GrandCentral Founders