Why Google’s hypocrisy finally took me from Fi and Voice

When Google Voice appeared in 2009, I was one of the first to register. Ditto for Google Fi. But last month I both thrown them away at the same time and brought them back to an amazing fifteen years of integrated services. Why? Because Google turned my back on me and I was tired of dealing with his hypocrisy.

A small context, if you are not aware. Google Voice is the number-forwarding service of the company and it was extremely cool when it made it debut for the first time. You have your own new telephone number that Google operated as a free VoIP service, and you can use it with an existing phone or number. In principle, it can replace your standard cell or fixed number, and you give access to text messages via a special app on your phone or internet. It is great for someone who rates telephones and does not want to exchange constant SIM cards.

Google FI is the mobile virtual network operator of Google, a brand career service that (in smaller ways) competes with companies such as AT&T and Verizon. This allows you to buy your mobile service from the same place where you buy pixel telephones, more or less, and offer reasonably good deals if you are good to lean on the smaller network of T-Mobile as a backbone. It is especially nice if you happen to be a pixel watch owner (and that’s me). 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 if someone who rated phones professionally. Speech in particular lets me and calls from a laptop or desktop pc long before more widespread options became available. Fi, just like T-Mobile, was generally great and more affordable as long as I was within the city limits. So why did I make a sharp, clean break with the management of Google of my mobile connections?

It was not because of Google’s privacy issues, although it certainly has plenty. It is not because I think my new cell provider, Verizon, is somehow better or less bad. It is not. No, I was fed up with Google ignored his voice service, especially in the light of a very public campaign against Apple. Between that and some dramatic interoperability problems, I set off for less aggravating meadows.

Google Pesters Apple to support RCS

Do you remember that Google Apple was bullying to add RCS options to the iPhone? I certainly do that. Google has publicly searched for the modern SMS standard and ultimately bring more liquid communication between iMessage and other platforms (mainly SMS on Android) for more than a calendar year. It even made a small festive advertisement when the iPhone started playing fun, which made better support possible for things such as Emoji reactions, group text functions and high-quality photo and video parts.

So given the extreme public support of Google to cross -platform RCS, Why the always loving Heck Does not support Google Voice RCS?

Yup, although Google Voice has been around for fifteen years, long prior to the SMS app from Google’s United messages for Android, Voice still does not support RCS messages. If you use voice on Android (or somewhere else, including the iPhone!), You are stuck with terrible photos and the “Ted Like this Message” response that Google complained in just three months ago. This does not only happen between speech users and iPhone users, it even happens when you use and chat Other Android users.

Google Voice, as a SMS platform, is a freakin ‘dinosaur.

I certainly do not have to explain why Google without RCS support on one of his own telephone products is a bad look. And I am not the only one who submits this complaint. Both regular users and my tech journalist Fellows have pointed to this inconsistency for years. While Google Voice is hoping with minimal updates, apparently avoiding The infamous Google Grayyard Thanks to some nice business integrations, it absolutely feels like users have been abandoned.

Google tried – and failed – to make a walled garden

But even that is not what really ranks me. It is the Holy-Dan-U-posture of Google. Google has pressed Apple to accept RCS, which implies that it does this on behalf of the approximately half of the market that Android uses. And although Android users certainly want to be able to chat with iPhone users, that is not the floating factor behind the Google campaign.

The truth is that Imessage is a real attraction on the iPhone, especially for younger users who have made the “Android Green text” a scarlet letter. And that is a subtle threat to Android. I think that Google Imessage fears as a product much more than altruistic wants to improve the reports across the board.

Do you want more proof? Google would absolutely kill to be in Apple’s position with iMessage. Because it tried to get there, several 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 the longest time). And that was the list from three years ago, excluding “messages” such as an app-slash platform on Android, Chrome and Internet.

Google has tried to create a communication garden, with different walls, for three decades. And it failed. It is therefore difficult to see the push against Apple’s iMessage as slightly more than sour grapes. Don’t get me wrong, Google that Apple spends at least some interoperability with RCS, is indeed a victory for users and consumers. But Google only did it after it had spent years and years drawing every possible option to expand its monopolistic practices in this atmosphere.

Google Voice and Google Fi could not work together

So yes, seeing Google occurred as the People’s Champion for Open Messaging after years of voice users who beg for RCS, anchoring. While my sister welcomed her first child and I suddenly started giving to get photos and videos of higher quality, I went looking for a way out. (For the record, my sister is Also An Android and Pixel user of more than ten years – you see why this is so frustrating for us, Google?)

So a few years ago, while I was still using Google Voice and Google FI, I tried to Porten my speech number. In theory, although Google Voice is a VoIP service, it should have ported another carrier like a number from every carrier. Google Fi was app-agent and should have supported RCS. I should change voice from voice to messages, but it would finally work.

It didn’t. The portion process, that is. There is a fairly simple tool online to celebrate your number in Google FI, but for whatever reason it did not accept my voice number. “Not eligible for transfer.” I was not completely shocked by this, because the VoIP character of the Google vote number sometimes causes a headache -some banks and services such as Uber don’t like it, and for that reason I had to use my backup (the number of attached to My physical SIM card) occasionally. Others have experienced the same problem to move a number from voice to FI.

Michael Crider/Foundry

So I submitted a support stick with Google FI, the Incarnation of Google that I had paid $ 60 a month for years and was waiting. And waited. And waited. For a year. And nothing happened. And nothing happened for it another year.

Fast forward to December 2024. I stare the course of a two -week holiday trip to the Texas countryside, in which many photos and videos are shared. I try to transfer my Google Voice number to Google Fi again. It won’t work. The automated system does not say how or why number porting has been broken, only that it is not available for that number, an experience that apparently happens that it has a warning on the support page: “Keep in mind that some Google vote numbers cannot be transferred to Google Fi. ”

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

I start with Google Fi, because again, they are the ones I pay. I ask if there is a reason that Google Voice numbers should not be portrayed. They say no. I try again and show proof that it doesn’t work. Allegedly they get someone from Google Voice in the conversation (reportedly because all this happens in a text -based interface, and it can be the same person for everything I know). The Google Voice person tries to Port. It doesn’t work.

The telephone number that I have been using for fifteen years is, in all performances, caught on voice, a zombie platform that does not support the RCS functions, has linked Google itself in public. From frustration (and yes, I admit, no small number of rights style in Karen), I ask the voice of the Voice customer service when Google Voice RCS supports support, even to the videos of the 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 -SSMS service refuses to implement to implement the SMS standards that Google requires that Apple implement, and cannot complete very basic telephone service in another Google service.

Google does not earn your loyalty

At this point I let my fingers walk to the website of Verizon Wireless, which has a tool with which you can test whether you can import your number to the courier. You do not have to register for an account. According to this website it can accept my Google Voice number, VoIP wrats and such, and set me up in just a few minutes with an ESIM.

Anna Tarazevich/Pexels

So I did it. I am now on Verizon, and not very happy with it – somehow Verizon succeeded in registering immediately for the service without actually having a Verizon account, and I had to drive to a store for my first invoice to pay.

But I have kept the telephone number that I have been using for 15 years, now not accelerated from every 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 could Verizon enter the number without problems, if Google couldn’t do it from one of its own services to another? I have no idea. I literally begged Google to tell myself for several years, and it wasn’t possible.

I fully admit that this article is a bit therapeutic nagging on my side. But I know there are other speech and FI users who have the same complaints. I say to you: try to get rid of Google. No company earns your loyalty, and through hypocrisy and apathy, Google earns it even less.