How Google’s hypocrisy finally drove me from fi and voice

When Google Voice arrived in 2009, I was one of the first to sign up. Ditto for Google Fi. But last month I threw them both away at the same time, turning my back on an astonishing fifteen years of integrated services. Why? Because Google turned its back on me and I was tired of dealing with its hypocrisy.

A little context, if you’re not aware. Google Voice is the company’s number-forwarding service and it was extremely cool when it first debuted. You have your own new phone number, which Google operated as a free VoIP service, and you can use it with an existing phone or number. It can basically replace your standard cell or landline number, giving you access to text messages through a special app on your phone or the internet. For someone who reviews phones and doesn’t want to constantly swap SIM cards, it’s great.

Google FI is Google’s mobile virtual network operator, a branded carrier service that competes (in smaller ways) with companies like AT&T and Verizon. This lets you buy your cell service from the same place you buy Pixel phones, more or less, and offers pretty good deals if you’re okay with leaning on T-Mobile’s smaller network as a backbone. It’s especially fun if you happen to be a Pixel Watch owner (which I am). I will add that both Google Voice and Google FI are only available to users in the United States, although the latter has good international roaming options.

I liked both Voice and Fi for a long time, especially as someone who reviewed phones professionally. Voice in particular lets me text and call from a laptop or desktop PC long before more widespread options became available. FI, like T-Mobile, was generally great and more affordable as long as I was within city limits. So why did I make a sharp, clean break from Google’s management of my mobile connections?

It wasn’t because of Google’s privacy concerns, although it certainly has plenty. It’s not because I think my new cell provider, Verizon, is somehow better or less bad. It’s not. No, I was tired of Google ignoring its voice service, especially in light of a very public campaign against Apple. Between that and some dramatic interoperability issues, I headed for less aggravating pastures.

Google Bullies Apple to Support RCS

Remember when Google bullied Apple into adding RCS capabilities to the iPhone? I certainly do. Google has publicly courted Apple to adopt the modern SMS standard, and eventually bring more fluid communications between IMessage and other platforms (mainly SMS on Android), for over a calendar year. It even made a little celebratory ad when the iPhone started playing nice, allowing better support for things like emoji reactions, group text features, and high-quality photo and video sharing.

So given Google’s extremely public support of cross-platform RCS, Why the ever-loving Heck Does Google Voice not support RCS?

Yup, even though Google Voice has been around for fifteen years, long predating Google’s United Messages texting app for Android, voice still doesn’t support RCS messaging. If you use Voice on Android (or anywhere else, including the iPhone!), you’re stuck with terrible photos and the “Ted Like This Message” response that Google complained about just three months ago. This doesn’t just happen between voice users and iPhone users, it happens even when you use voice and chat Other Android users.

Google Voice, as a texting platform, is a freakin’ dinosaur.

I certainly don’t need to explain why Google without RCS support on one of its own phone products is a bad look. And I’m not the only one filing this complaint. Both regular users and my tech journalist Fellows have been pointing out this inconsistency for years. While Google Voice is limping along with minimal updates, apparently avoid it the infamous Google Graveyard Thanks to some nice enterprise integrations, it definitely feels like its users have been abandoned.

Google tried – and failed – to create a walled garden

But even that isn’t what really ranks me. It’s Google’s holier-than-thou attitude. Google has been pushing Apple to adopt RCS, implying it is doing so on behalf of the roughly half of the market that uses Android. And while Android users certainly want to be able to chat more fluidly with iPhone users, that’s not the driving factor behind Google’s campaign.

The truth is that iMessage is a real draw on the iPhone, especially for younger users who have made the “Android Green text” a scarlet letter. And that’s a subtle threat to Android. I think Google fears iMessage as a product much more than it altruistically wants to improve messaging across the board.

Do you want more proof? Google would absolutely kill to be in Apple’s position with iMessage. Because it has tried to get there, multiple times, with multiple chat services. Google Talk. Google Voice. Google Wave, with its own built-in chat service a la Facebook. Google Buzz. Google+, again with a chat component. Google Hangouts. Google Allo. Google Chat (that’s what people called Talk for the longest time). And that was the list as of three years ago, excluding “messages” as an app-slash platform on Android, Chrome, and the web.

Google has been trying to create a communication garden, with several walls, for three decades. And it failed. So it’s hard to see the push against Apple’s imessage as anything more than sour grapes. Don’t get me wrong, Google bringing Apple through at least some interoperability with RCS is indeed a win for users and consumers. But Google did it only after spending years and years exhausting every possible option to expand its monopolistic practices in this sphere.

Google Voice and Google Fi couldn’t work together

So yeah, seeing Google posing as the People’s Champion for Open Messaging after years of voice users begging for RCS was entrenching. As my sister welcomed her first child and I suddenly started caring about getting higher quality photos and videos, I started looking for a way out. (For the record, my sister is Also An Android and Pixel user of over a decade – see why this is so frustrating for us, Google?)

So a few years ago, while still using Google Voice and Google FI, I tried to port my voice dial to FI. In theory, even though Google Voice is a VoIP service, it should have ported just like a number from any carrier to another. Google FI was app agnostic and should have supported RCS. I would have to change my voice from voice to messaging but it would finally work.

It didn’t. The portioning process, that is. There is a fairly simple tool online to port your number into Google Fi, but for whatever reason it wouldn’t accept my voice number. “Not eligible for transfer.” I wasn’t entirely shocked by this, as the VoIP nature of the Google voice number sometimes causes headaches – some banks and services like Uber don’t like it, and for that reason I’ve had to use my backup (the number attached to my physical SIM card) occasionally. Others have experienced the same problem moving a song from voice to FI.

Michael Crider/Foundry

So I filed a support ticket with Google FI, the incarnation of Google I had been paying $60 a month to for years and waited. And waited. And waited. For a year. And nothing happened. And nothing happened for it another year.

Fast forward to December 2024. I’m staring down the barrel of a two-week vacation trip to rural Texas, during which many photos and videos are shared. I’m trying to transfer my Google Voice number to Google Fi again. It won’t work. The automated system doesn’t say how or why number porting was broken, only that it is not available for that number, an experience that is apparently so common that it has a warning on the support page: “Please note that some Google voice numbers cannot be transferred to Google Fi. ”

Why? How? Is there any hope for the affected ones? No idea. I grit my teeth and prepare to contact a human who works for Google.

I’ll start with Google Fi because again, they’re the ones I pay. I’m asking if there is a reason that Google Voice numbers are not allowed to be ported in state. They say no. I’ll try again and show proof that it doesn’t work. Supposedly they get someone from Google Voice on the call (allegedly, because this is all done in a text-based interface, and it could be the same person for all I know). The Google Voice person is trying to Port. It doesn’t work.

The phone number I have been using for fifteen years is, in all appearances, captured on voice, a zombie platform that does not support the RCS features, Google itself has publicly linked. Out of frustration (and yes, I admit, no small number of rights style in Karen), I’m asking Voice of Voice customer service when Google Voice adds RCS support, even to the videos from that same public Google campaign.

The service person apologizes, but they have no information about plans to add RCS support to Google Voice. In summary, a Google SMS service refuses to implement the SMS standards that Google requires Apple to implement, nor can it complete a very basic phone service in another Google service.

Google doesn’t deserve your loyalty

At this point I ran my fingers over to the Verizon Wireless website, which has a tool that allows you to test whether you can import your number to the carrier. You do not need to sign up for an account. According to this website, it can accept my Google Voice number, VoIP warts and all, and set me up with an ESIM in just minutes.

Anna Tarazevich/Pexels

So I did it. I’m on Verizon now, and not particularly happy about it – somehow Verizon managed to get me signed up for the service right away without actually having a Verizon account, and I had to drive to a store to get my first bill to pay.

But I keep the phone number I’ve used for 15 years, now unaccelerated from any Google service, and I get high-res photos and videos from my sister and brother-in-law. And at least Verizon never pretended to be a champion of open standards. Why would Verizon be able to pull the number in without any problems, when Google couldn’t do it from one of its own services to another? I have no idea. I literally begged Google to tell me for several years, and it couldn’t.

I fully admit that this article is a bit of therapeutic whining on my part. But I know there are other voice and FI users who have the same complaints. To you I say: try to get rid of Google. No company deserves your loyalty, and hypocrisy and apathy makes Google even less so.