Google Voice and User Experience

Have you read about google voice? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html

This is really phenomenal from a user experience perspective. Users can use a regular telephone to make free long distance calls. The news outlets make a big deal about the competition with Skype but all those voip services that rely on the computer limit the way people want to use the phone.

I compare this to the difference between watching Netflix videos on a computer to the change that Roku brought. It's a world of difference.

Vonage has similar advantages but I think Google Voice could succeed where Vonage has not. Vonage is potentially great but it doesn't save me that much money and the service doesn't work that well.

The Achilles heal hear is that Google will have people call a voice mail service and make calls therefrom. That extra step could be a real hassle and keep people from using it. But, I could image having a speed dial number that gets a user directly to the Google Voice dialtone. That would ease things significantly.