Google earlier this week made its Google Voice telephone application platform available to the general public. For the past year, the Web-based communications platform was  available to a limited number of people by invitation only.

“Today, after lots of testing and tweaking, we’re excited to open up Google Voice to the public, no invitation required,” Google Voice product managers Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet wrote in a June 22 blog post announcing the change. “If you haven’t yet tried Google Voice, we can’t wait for you to try it out and let us know what you think.”

Google Voice offers a single phone number for all a user’s devices, voicemail-to-text transcription that can then be sent to a user’s email account, the ability to listen in to a caller's voice message while he is leaving it, free conference calling, a personalized greeting, free calls and text messaging throughout the United States and Canada, low-cost international calls, and call blocking.

“We’re proud of the progress we’ve made with Google Voice over the last few years, and we’re still just scratching the surface of what’s possible when you combine your regular phone service with the latest Web technology,” wrote Walker and Paquet.

“Over the past year, we’ve introduced a mobile Web app, an integrated voicemail player in Gmail, the ability to use Google Voice with your existing number and more. Over a million of you are now actively using Google Voice, and many of the features released over the past year (like SMS to email and our Chrome extension) came as a result of your suggestions”