Notices

Go Window$ Task Manager, press Ctrl-Alt-Del, chances are you will have GoogleUpdate running without you knowing it or ask for your permission. I have GoogleUpdate running in ALL my 5 desktops and HAVE NOT been able to kil it. It is the biggest virus I have seen.

I like some Google, but not this GoogleUpdate. So does Help and Support from MS, did they ever ask for your permsision to run it CONTINUOUSLY at the background. Sure they did NOT.

Everytime I kill the GoogleUpdate and MS Help and support, my computer dl increases 100%, however, upon reboot, it is running at the background again, have NOT been able to get rid of it.

bun

bun

Regarding this whole discussion about Google being scary, I agree, to an extent, that they've got a whole lot of people (and eventually many more) totally hooked on their free services -- what would be do if they started charging for them?

But realistically, the nature of the web (for the moment, at least) is that free equivalents pop up to almost any equivalent paid service. I've got a MobileMe account (because I get it free from work) but can (and do) duplicate all of its services for free, since I'm not going to get it free forever, and sure as hell won't pay for it. There will always be another free webmail provider, another search engine, etc (or at least there will be if Google does something that turns people off to them and creates the demand -- for the moment they're positioned to be the sole big player in those, despite Yahoo's and Microsoft's attempts to regain their shares).

The other point to remember is that they've managed to get obscenely rich off of pretty subtle, easy-to-ignore ads that are (gasp!) actually relevant enough that I'd bet all of us, ad-proof as we all are, have clicked on one at least once. They've got no incentive to do anything that'll piss users off as long as there's tons of money to be made providing excellent services for free that enough people use to make the ads worthwhile.

For the moment, I think we've got little to fear from Google, though I could see over-zealous datamining becoming a problem.

Oh well, I use a G1, so all my personal data are belong to them anyway.

I am fine except for the sms. I wish sms would just die and go to some other standard, sip simple or xmpp, or anything. sms is the last link of chain around my leg to the cell carriers. I can of course send all I want through various services(various chat services, clickatell, etc) but receiving is a huge pain in the ***, and as of right now not really possible unless you pay some company about $20/per month. The gtalk sms was as close as I have ever been and I even gladly sent my daily missives, even to my wife, over google services, but they canceled it

Other caveats.

1) SMS is not 100%, just like the GTalk SMS things like short codes are not supported, so you can't do things with services like Facebook/Twitter ( yet )

2) US only, international people are really screwed at this point since some will get the upgrade notice only to be unable to login to the new service because of their location. You have to use a US proxy just to be able to properly finish setting up the account.

3) Ringshare is gone

4) All your settings are wiped back to the default ( greetings, groups, ... )

5) All your phones are active after the cutover no matter what was selected before.

Almost-but-not-quite

Call presention ( "press 1" ) can be disabled on a global/group/contact basis... but NOT BY PHONE! This is dumb.

That's not to bad (1 cent per minute). Do you know what the other prices are? (say Sweden or Italy?). Even if you talk for an hour that's only 60 cents.

Ive been using the mobile version of the google voice page, as the contacts page will not load completely using the full version, and when using the mobile page, I, for the lofe of me, cant find a way to delete an SMS conversation from the inbox when done without going to the full page.

Ringshare is gone?! Aww, I liked having the personal ringtones for friends versus co-workers, etc..

Im just glad that dialcentral still works for the time being. Would there be anyway to integrate SMS send/receive into a future version?

the rates are at

http://www.google.com/support/voice/...?answer=141925

so basically like any other sip provider except US is free, but I am sure being the google that they are, they are making up that few cents per minute to US with some knowledge of usage habits and some shifting rates to other popular international destinations. Big whoopee.

The sms is cool though, how do they do that?