T&A: Google introduced a new service today called Google Voice, which basically allows users to store voicemail messages in their email inbox, transcribe them into text-based messages and send them out as email or SMS text messages. While speculators are wondering how Google intends to generate revenue with the service, the genesis of Google Voice came from Google’s acquisition of Grand Central Communications in 2007.

Using speech recognition tech Google developed for its Goog-411 (a telephone directory service available only in the US and Canada), Google Voice will be available to existing users of GrandCentral first, before being available for public use later on. GrandCentral offers quite a few features, such as a single number to ring your home, work and mobile phones, with a centralized voicemail inbox you could access via the Web. It is expected that Google Voice will have these same set of features incorporated into the service. (Editor opinions: 1)

Check out a video demonstrating how Google Voice works:

Terence Ang, Supervising Editor, HWM

Terence (HWM): A fellow colleague of mine has always believed that it’s human nature to talk more than to write or read (unless of course, if you’re a recluse or lack the power of speech).

While the world’s abuzz with Google’s next big attempt to “digitize” the speech-o-sphere via Google Voice, what the company really is doing is to pull all forms of thought and idea [whether it's written in long form (Google Book Search), short form (Google Web Search), spoken (Google Voice), geographical (Google Earth) or personal (Gmail)] and put them into one massive digital sandbox. Within this sandbox, the company can tailor its keyword search network much more effectively and with that, enhance the mileage and accuracy for its keyword ads.

Google Talk (GTalk) is highly integrated into Gmail and the Android platform, making it a potential cross-communicative platform for Google Voice.

On a strategic level, Google Voice might give GTalk a much needed boost and perhaps create a tighter integrated network with Google’s Android platform.

Beyond that however, it might give trend-watchers a better way to discern emotion and moods in a more collective manner. 

Similar to how we’re catching cursory emotional shifts in public opinion from Twitter, Google Voice can potentially do the same, except that it might do it better, because the source of the transcript is originally spoken, not written, and the material to work with is far greater than one- or two-sentence blurbs.

Thus, the potential for keyword search based on emotional inclination is tremendously profound, but for it to thrive, developers must create useful applications that are intelligent enough to understand the way our subconscious work.