Google Voice begins accepting new users

Google announced it has begun accepting new users for Google Voice today, though public sign-up for the site is still unavailable. After much speculation about when the service would finally go live, Google began sending emails to users who requested notification of its availability in March.

Google did not say how many invitations would be sent at this time for the service or when general sign-up will begin. 

ComputerWorld's Mike Elgan thinks Google will roll the service out to the public widely, continuing to offer it for free, so as to mine transcribed voicemails for contextual advertising, a la Gmail. While contextual advertising has taken a serious beating from consumer groups lately, Elgan doesn't think Google's hypothetical use case would be a Big Brother move.

"If all this sounds sinister, it isn't," Elgan wrote in his coverage. "This is simply where advertising is going. Most people have demonstrated willingness to give up privacy for free stuff. And in fact, contextual advertising itself is desirable. It's better to be pitched products you're likely to want rather than products you don't want."

For more:
- see the Google blog post here 
- see Elgan's ComputerWorld article here

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