Tag Archives: fonolo

DOES Grand Central matter to Google?

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Here’s an interesting piece questioning Google’s lack of improvements to the Grand Central service since acquiring it a while back.  The author asks why nothing has changed with GC since the acquisition.

The trick to understanding Google’s publicity lag for GC is the core technology they use: VoIP.  This technology family has not fully matured, and isn’t likely to be pervasive until somebody, Google, really figures out how to get the final frontier of datacomm applications–realtime media–OFF of traditional transmission mechanisms and ONTO the web. Up until now, VoIP and telephony have remained largely excluded from the Google party, relegated to a climate of inaction where business dictates the preservation of legacy, circuit-switched networks. End-to-end VoIP hasn’t materialized yet, so the penetration of services like Grand Central into mainstream culture has been low. That’s got folks wondering why Google is apparently just sitting on what we in the industry consider to be a gold mine.

So why hasn’t Grant Central become the showpiece many of us expected?  I think I have the answer: the industry isn’t ready.

The opportunity for Google to capitalize on Grand Central might still be ahead of us, not behind us. Grand Central’s core technology is VoIP call-switching.  Software is used to automate this core technology and create a very simple, very useful palette of telephony tools, mostly for directing incoming phone calls to cellphones and SIP agents such as Gizmo Project.

I see Grand Central mashing up with services like searchable voicemail, language translation, Fonolo, which dials phone menus to save time, and things like SwitchVox and Fonality, which provide SIP-based telephony at the desktop.  To Googlize voice, the notions of search and user-preference-driven intuition  have to enter the equation, and Grand Central gives Google a means to this end.  But, I say again, the industry may not be ready.

In the background, Google is doing what it can to ready the industry–making access to the network more ubiquitous, fighting regulation of currently open access mechanisms (primarily radio spectrum), and readying a path to open converged platforms via its Android mobile operating system.  All the while, Google has avoided the nasty temptation to cozy up to the big phone companies, because of their affinity for the status quo.

A little success on each of these fronts could create the perfect storm for GC, just as the desire for cheap advertising and darn good searchability created the perfect storm for Google during Bubble 1.0.

Press 1 for Fonolo

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Fonolo

The latest voice 2.0 launch to cross my inbox is a company called Fonolo–and their solution is really really awesome. As a Fonolo user, you’ll be able to shortcut throug those annoying option-dialing menus you normally have to deal with when calling big companies–like the airline, or the electric company for example. This is particularly true if you call the same companies all the time and you’re getting tired of telling them over and over that you want your session in English, not Spanish. Or perhaps that you want your session in Spanish.

Either way, Fonolo solves the problem. Their web-based interface shows you a hierarchical layout of a particular company’s menu, so you can click right to the step in the menu that you want before you even pick up the phone. Fonolo dials through the menu (rapidly) and your cell phone rings. When you answer, you’re already at the point in the menu where you want to be. Seconds, not minutes.

I’m thinking about half-jokingly telling the Fonolo folks that every web menu should have an option labeled “get me a human”, because dealing with the Electric Company or the Mortgage Company can be a real runaround–sometmes you just want a human to talk to.  Fonolo will get you to that human a lot quicker.