It’s finally here. Google’s snazzy new phone service is slowly becoming available to one and all. Google Voice is a one-stop shop for all your phoning needs, combining all of your phone numbers into a single number and even routing all of your extra phone services to one device. The beauty of simplification has a lot of appeal for the phone-stressed time in which we live. Now, it’s available on a wider scale.

During the test phase, Google Voice was a service that only GrandCentral customers could use. GrandCentral, a shiny new toy that Google bought two years ago, was the predecessor of the new-and-improved Google Voice. Demand for the service was greater than the smallish number of GrandCentral subscribers, so Google opened the gates wider to those potential users who had requested the service before. Now, Google Voice is taking invitation requests from any and all users. The official site reads, “Google Voice is currently available for GrandCentral users only, but will be open to new users soon. In the meantime, please leave us your email address and we’ll notify you as soon as Google Voice becomes available.”

One of the few things standing in the way of Google Voice becoming pandemically popular is the initial shock of “no-way-not-another-phone-thing.” In an age where iPhones and Palm Pres will do everything short of flying you to the moon, we tend to be afraid of yet another phone service—let alone another username/password to memorize. Humbug.

Yet the humbug attitude toward Google Voice may fade, once you understand its simplifying potential. Google Voice is not a tool meant to clutter your life with more phone stuff, but rather to clean up the phone stuff that’s already in your life. Google tells you that it “helps you better manage your voice communications.”

How? Regardless of your service, phone, or level of techno-know-how, Google Voice melts all your phone numbers—home phone, your cell phone, your office phone, your other work phone, and even the phone in the shop—into one simple, single number. Since you’re only in one place at a time, all your phones will ring simultaneously, and you get to pick up the phone nearest to you.

Worried about remembering another number? Then why not choose one yourself? Searching for available numbers by words or letters gives you an easy way to find an easy-to-memorize number. Imagine how good it would feel to tell people that your new phone number is: I-AM-COOL.

But that’s only the start. If you haven’t done it yet, check out the rest of the features that Google Voice provides.

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