Google to kill Voice in coming months, integrate features into Hangouts

[gk1]

http://9to5google.com/2014/03/18/google-plans-kill-google-voice-in-months-integrate-features-into-hangouts/

[zatkin]

Well, this is unfortunate, if true. I'm an avid user of Google Voice and I push out a free, public phone number for people to reach me at "from the Internet", or other folks who I don't trust enough with my real phone number. I hope they can manage to integrate things into Hangouts to my satisfaction, otherwise I'm going to have to look to alternatives.

With this in mind, if the integration goes awfully, does anyone have any recommended alternatives?

[cmaxwe]

Hopefully they will open it up to Canada in the process. They left it open by mistake I think for a few days a while ago but now it won't let you Add a Canadian number.

[lauradhamilton]

My interpretation isn't that they are killing it so much as merging it with Hangouts.

The Google Voice app is pretty crappy, so this seems like a smart move to me.

[xur17 → lauradhamilton]

This has been my understanding too, and I'm very happy about it. Google Voice in Hangouts would be very nice.