Google Voice opens arms to the public - and Frontier slaps back with lawsuit

Google Voice, an online voicemail and telecommunications service that gained more than a million active users while still in beta stage, is open to the public--meaning you no longer need an invitation to try it out. If you live in the United States, that is.

Just as quickly as Google got the word up on its blog, Frontier Communications announced that it's suing Google for patent infringement.

The suit revolves around Google Voice's biggest feature--a single phone number that forwards calls to multiple devices, such as a users' home, work and mobile phones. No comment from either party on the lawsuit as of yet.

In addition to the phone number, users get voicemail with call routing capabilities and speech-to-text transcription, which makes voicemail messages searchable and storable--you know, alongside all that other data Google's already collected on you that it swears it would never, ever use in any way.

There are certainly plans to expand the application's capabilities, the article adds. Within the past year, Google bought Global IP Solutions (GIPS), Episodic, and Gizmo5, all of which deal in VoIP services including software and equipment.

For more:
- InformationWeek has this story
- Reuters covers the Fronter lawsuit here

Related articles:
Rumor Mill: Google testing Voice integration in Gmail
Forget Skype, Google acquires Gizmo5 VoIP startup instead
GoogleVoice has 1.4M users; reveals partner companies