The Dosquatch Says…

Your furry host has scored himself an invite for Google Voice. I’ve been playing with it for all of nearly an afternoon, so it’s time to gush. Think of it as an unboxing video. Only without the box. Or the video.

Google Voice is a voicemail system with bonus features. As a simple voicemail system, you assign your mobile phone to use Teh Goog as your provider, and then configure as you would a normal voicemail system – record your name, an outgoing message, whatever. And then you configure, and configure. You can record different messages for each of your groups. You can record specific greetings for specific people.

But that’s not all… you also have the option of signing up for a new Google phone number. This number forwards incoming calls to up to 6 lines, so you can set it up to ring home, work, cell, 2nd line, beach house… or whatever suits you. And you can pick which lines ring for which groups, so you can give out 1 number forever to everybody, and if they’re family they can ring everywhere but if it’s some vendor at a trade show it will only ring at work. Or, better, just drop straight to voicemail.

And that voicemail… ain’t just voicemail anymore. The mighty Goog servers save your messages, transcribe them, send them to you in email (or sms or through the Voice app), and the messages live on their servers where you can google search them forever.

And I’m sure there’s plenty more, but I’m still playing. Of course, all of this is just padding out Goog’s arsenal of information as part of its Evil Plan, but in the meantime the tools are just so damn cool. Pardon me, I have a soul to sell.

Social Commentary, Technology evil, google

I was speaking with someone recently about Google and their mantra, “Don’t be Evil”.

“They are evil,” he said. “I don’t trust them. They’re way more evil than Microsoft ever was.”

Now, evil is a subjective term. Google is a company, and they want to make money. They want to make money by using our information, on us, in an effort to make us give our money away. Not to them, mind, to whoever. They connect people who want to spend money with the people who have what you want to spend money on, and for this they collect tiny little fees… but they collect billions of tiny little fees, and turn those into huge mountains of cash.

But to get you to give up your money, they have to know you. They have to first get you to give up your information. And the best way, it turns out, is not to beast stomp throats like Microsoft, which is overtly evil. No, the most effective way is to make us happy. To lull us into joyfully flinging ourselves into whatever doom they’re engineering. insideously evil, if they are indeed evil.

They may be. My friend might be right. But if they are, it turns out that I don’t care. Their brand of evil makes my life easier, and me happier.

Evil is good.

Social Commentary, Technology evil, google