Integrating Email with Voice Mail

Last week, Google announced that they were integrating their VoIP technology with their email service.

Some interpret this as big brother closing the noose around smaller offerings such as Skype. Indeed, maybe that is why Skype is willing to be acquired by Cisco. Let the big boys battle it out.

I have been using Google Voice for a while and I do like the ability to see voice messages that people leave on your phone as text in an email style GUI. The usage pattern seems to be to use text to negotiate when to have a real time phone conversation so this integration does seem to be a natural next step for Google Voice.