Google Voice Finally Marries SMS And Email

Image via CrunchBase

A long requested feature of Google Voice was a simple one: forward inbound text messages to email. Google Voice users get voicemails auto-transcribed and emailed to them, but text messages were not. Users can read and respond to them online in addition to their phones in the normal way, but email forwarding wasn’t an option.

Tonight that changed. Google Voice users now have the ability to forward inbound text messages to email. And even better, you can reply from email as well.

There are third party services (example) that have offered this, but they require users to give these services your Google Voice credentials, which is never a good idea. It’s great that Google launched this feature directly.

Since they seem to be taking requests, here’s my next one: launch an API. I can’t wait to see what developers come up with, and I’d love to use those non-Google services in a secure way without giving them my Google Voice credentials.