Is it something I said?
If Google has a master plan for taking over the world, as of this date, I say resistance is futile. These guys just keep innovating to the point of intoxication. I'm giddy for gmail, in fact it is my only email for home use. I retired Outlook due to the search capabilities. However, for work for some time I had gmail as a pseudo Exchange server in a way. Meaning I synced to my gmail with outlook and got the best of both worlds. Desktop search by Google is amazing. Need to find something on one of 50 mapped drives...no problemo. Calendar is fantastic, you can share with others, add public calendars. Web site analytics is pretty sweet, giving some high-end features for free. Is it free?
The newest purchase of Google is pretty exciting. They just purchased GrandCentral.com for an undisclosed amount. I first heard of GrandCentral.com a couple of months ago from David Poague, Technology Editor for the NY Times in his weekly podcast. I've used a similar service with LP Wireless only it is expensive and GrandCentral is free.
What does it give you. The website from its conception touts that you have 1 telephone number for life. If someone calls the number it then broadcasts in rotation to all of your phones until you answer the one that you are near, albiet cell phone, work phone, home, or otherwise. It has features that send your voicemails to you via email. You can transfer calls between your phones if someone calls through the service. So, yes, you can transfer a call from your cell to your home phone, then transfer it back. It's an amazing service and now one of the biggest and definitely brightest companies in the world has bought them and did I mention the service is free.
So how does this play into the Google grand scheme of advertising. All we can do is guess, so here is mine. I was just visiting Google labs and noticed that they have a telephone number you can call to get directory services. That's right Google is now into the voice recognition game and they can now do analysis on what you say. Now I'm no suggesting that people at Google will eavesdrop on your conversation, but rest assure a computer will compare the bits and bytes of your voice to determine if something you've said matches something that needs to be sold by a client.
This concept creeps a lot of people out I suppose. I personally don't mind as long as they keep feeding me my online toys. Got to get my Google fix..