Google Launches Google Voice

Google today introduced Google Voice, a service that combines traditional phone features with Google's Gmail email product, allowing users to store transcripts of voicemail phone messages in their email inbox and locate specific information within a phone message.

Google Voice is based on the technology of Grand Central Communications--a company that Google acquired in July 2007—and offers users a single phone number that can route incoming calls to home, office, and cell phones.

The offering uses speech recognition technology, automatically transcribing voicemails into text. The transcribed messages can then be forwarded as an email or text message to a user's email inbox.