

Google App Engine – SMS and Voice Integration With Twilio - shakes
https://developers.google.com/appengine/articles/twilio

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sologoub
That's great, but telecom is still agaist GAE ToS:

"4.3 Restrictions. Customer will not, and will not allow third parties under
its control to: (f) use the Service to operate or enable any
telecommunications service or in connection with any Application that allows
End Users to place calls to or to receive calls from any public switched
telephone network;"

Source: <https://developers.google.com/appengine/terms>

A question was asked about this a few months back and a GAE PM basically said
use it at your own risk. Here's the thread:
[https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-
appengine/c8u71g5Cc...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-
appengine/c8u71g5CcIg/discussion)

Hopefully, this is a signal that they want to sort this out...

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lurker14
Google Groups website is broken, so that thread is not readable.

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sologoub
Seems to work fine for me... but here's the response:

"Re: [google-appengine] Re: TOS question - may I add a dial button

Hello All,

Please take my comment as a comment and not legal guidance as any legal
guidance needs to come from your own legal counsel based on our terms of
service. But, that clause is in our ToS as App Engine is not built to be or
regulated as a telecommunication service and as such anyone who would fall
under telecommunication regulations would likely not pass an audit. I know
that sounded cryptic but I'm trying to be as precise as possible without
telling you what to do :)

I hope that helps and I hope you'll understand if you want more clarification
it might be hard to give,

Greg D'Alesandre Senior Product Manager, Google App Engine"

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zabar
The Twilio api is so simple that this "integration" does not bring much except
exposure for Twilio and $20 of Twilio credit for appengine users. We have been
using Twilio to send SMS from our appengine app for months now without any
issue. In any case a good news.

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RobSpectre
Killer Zabar - what have you been using it for?

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zabar
The app is both on the web and on mobile (iOS and Android app). When you use
it on the web, we advertise the mobile version, with the option for the user
to give his phone number to receive an SMS on his phone with the install link.
It serves as a reminder and ease the experience of finding us on the app store
with a way better conversion rate than an email.

~~~
RobSpectre
Slick - love that use case. Totally one we didn't expect, by the way, but has
ended up being super effective.

Super easy to implement and test on GAE too with the Tasks API. The testbed
makes an async implementation with full coverage half an hour of work. Big fan
of the supplementary services Google provides here.

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pdknsk
I'm disappointed by this poor integration. I had hoped Google would at least
make importing libraries somewhat easier by including them as official third
party libraries.

[http://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/tools/lib...](http://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/tools/libraries27)

This is just marketing. For some actual added value, Google could've made the
whole process of acquiring tokens and billing transparent. Click a button in
the App Engine dashboard, and it gets new tokens from Twilio which are billed
through Google.

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crabasa
_Disclaimer: I work for Twilio_

This is more than just marketing, but less than what you're describing. A
great deal of work went into updating and testing our helper libraries in the
GAE environment, as well as building documentation and proof on concepts[1]
for developers to learn from.

Deeper forms of integration require heavier lifting and require buy-in across
the organization. If partnerships like this are successful and improve the
adoption and use of new tooling, I think it will be much easier to make a case
for more integration down the line.

[1]: <http://twiliosandbox.appspot.com/>

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27182818284
For (I think) a year now I've had a toy application I wrote one Saturday that
uses GAE with Twilio. It is just a joke line where Twilio reads off a joke to
the caller and let's them vote up/down on it. Twilio is so easy that it was
only about 2 hours work one rainy Saturday to get it up and running. It has
worked without errors ever since and is still using the initial deposit I gave
Twilio.

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RobSpectre
Nice! What's the number? Love comedy lines.

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nileshgr
Don't know about other countries, but it's quite costlier compared to GupShup,
which operates a similar service in India.

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RobSpectre
Important feedback - thanks for sharing.

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josh2600
Good for the Twil' homies. Congrats guys. More distro is good distro.

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RobSpectre
Thanks Josh!

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vskr
Congrats!! Would be great to know how this was made possible. Did Google
approach Twilio, or did Twilio approach Google, or is there a third party
services partner program that any developer can follow

