Google giving phone numbers to homeless

August 29, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments |

googleprojectconnect.gifGoogle is giving people in the San Francisco homeless community a free phone number and voicemail via GrandCentral, the service that was recently acquired by Google.

We’re told an announcement is supposed to be made on Google’s blog, and at an event today held by Project Homeless Connect in San Francisco today, although we haven’t confirmed this.

GrandCentral lets you route all your numbers and devices through that a single number. We’ve written about it here. It had offered the service for free for a limited testing period, but initially only provided 100 minutes per month to use to call out on it. After a testing period or after you run out of minutes, it starts charging per month.

Obviously, the assumption here is that the homeless will get the service for. The question is where they will get a phone. Or maybe that’s the point. Even if they don’t have a phone, they can route the number to the main line at the shelter where they are staying, or to a friend or relative’s home number.

Project Homeless Connect was started in 2004 by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, someone known to have socialized with the Google co-founders.

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  • brett
    Grand Central announced their participation in this project before they launched last year:
    http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/20...
  • Where the F will the homeless get a internet connection and a computer. Remember they are HOMELESS!!
  • This actually makes a lot of sense to me. You can check voicemail from a shelter phone or a payphone (for 50 cents). And every time I go to the Chicago Public Library, many homeless people are using the computers there for free. Several homeless people have given me their email addresses, in fact. Why not phone numbers?
  • It's good to know they still think of the "do no evil" motto sometime. Of course you might want to tell that to the Chinese dissedents. I tend to think that the larger any orginization gets it inevitably steps on people. No matter how good its intentions.

    http://geekwonk.com
  • It's much, much more easier and handy to work with voicemail messages mp3s than with traditional voicemail.They can be delivered in email as an attachment or stored on third party hosts, i.e. easily accessible online.I keep all my countless important voicemails in one place that way plus can share/forward them instantly not to mention saving on cell minutes. Heck, I even created some funny voicemail messages mixing in my favorite MP3 tracks as a background. So it's neat stuff. The key here is to get your voicemail mp3s produced automatically. Jeff