Presumably because it's still providing value. It was originally about mass collecting voice data so they could train their speech-to-text capabilities with various dialects.

Dialects are always in flux and there are plenty of languages out there they haven't conquered, so ... I'd guess they're just leaving it running to detect new speech or languages or dialets or ... personal data gathering or... ?

Man, they collected a lot of prank calls from my younger-self lol.

Youtube has significantly better voice data

The audio quality of Youtube videos is not representative of the audio quality of someone speaking into their phone.

The speech patterns also differ heavily, with Youtubers (usually) talking in a presentative manner and speaking very clearly.

I think the way people talk in private phone calls, as well as the call audio quality, are much more similar to that of someone speaking to an assistant.

Google Voice was also supposed to revolutionize how many parts of cell phone service were to be provided -- signing in to an account instead of SIM cards, multiple phone numbers on one device, visual voicemail, advanced calling features. Android was supposed to be the vehicle of delivery.

In fact, Google Voice on Android was supposed to make calls via data-only (no minutes usage) on a smartphone, but carriers would not allow Google to do that. Hence the strange random-number dialing which utilizes a 3 way call to make a 2 way call by default. Years later, they quietly allowed calls over data but by then GV was already on lifesupport.

Same here. I'm equal parts glad and puzzled that it hasn't been killed. I genuinely don't know what I would replace it with.

I used it since a few years before Google bought GrandCentral in '07. A couple of years ago I moved to voip.ms as part of my de-googling and am happy with it. There are oodles of such providers.

Oodles of providers that give you a permanent US number for free?

I didn't look for a free option after leaving Google Voice. I'm happy to pay the low cost to be the customer instead of the product. Same with gmail to fastmail.

Does Sprint even exist anymore

no, Sprint was folded into T-mobile.

The only reason that merger was even allowed to happen was because it was extremely clear that Sprint would not have been a going concern into the next year if it would stay independent.

And as a result, T-Mobile has gotten worse, because now they don't have to try as hard to compete with AT&T and Verizon.

I feel like Sprint failing may have been better for the market; I expect more Sprint customers would have switched to AT&T or Verizon than to T-Mobile, and T-Mobile would still have to fight for customers.

Instead, T-Mo has jacked up prices just like everyone else, reduced nice perks, and their "uncarrier" movement is but a memory.

Hush now, don't remind them of it!! ;P

In all seriousness, though: if I were a user of Google Voice, I'd be seriously concerned that they would shut it down in a way that caused me to lose access to my phone number (even if only indirectly, as happened recently with their divesture of Google Domains or whatever their registrar was called)... you are much braver than I ;P.

I wouldn't worry about voice. They offer it as a paid feature of GSuite to business customers. It's not going anywhere.

They're now calling it "Google Workspace" for the moment.

Like Google Domains?

https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6069226

Sprint is T-Mobile now

I've been burned by Google too many times, but I'm definitely thankful for them continuing to maintain Voice, and even actively improving it over the last few years. I've been using it as my primary phone number since the GrandCentral days, so it'd be a pretty big pain to have the rug pulled out from under me at this point.

It would also be pretty shortsighted from a business perspective, IMO. Voice could still be extended to compete with iMessage and WhatsApp, like they sort of tried to do back when they were going to merge it with Hangouts.

> compete with iMessage and WhatsApp,

God please no more messaging apps from Google for the love of god.

lol, I'm certainly not advocating for that, but I'd rather they release 100 new messaging apps than kill Google Voice.

I think there is/are some executives at Google/Alphabet that utilize GV so much that they couldn't kill it if they wanted to. I used to have a voip device that worked with my GV number, and Google extended the life of the API used several years, I since stopped using that device and the service had still been working for it.

I do miss when GV and SMS were integrated with Hangouts though... was imo a much better experience than you get today with all the broken out apps.