Matt, I'm not saying it's not useful. I said it was a lame duck. And by all accounts and the hoopla it's (not) getting, my assessment seems to hold water.

Its use is greatly diminished when you already have those capabilities, which a lot of people do. At that point GV doesn't bring much to the table other than redundancy. As mentioned, I did give it props for SMS, which most people will not have with other non-cell-based calling plans. It does also bring potentially "free" routing where not everyone is necessarily with a "free" provider with such options.

I was using it last night, so I'll give you my example.

Using GVM+ I initiated an outgoing call with the "direct dial" option. I called my home number. GVM+ sent me to my regular Phone dialer and popped up some strange number on the screen. So it has to call some random number to connect me to the number I actually want to talk to. I can understand this. GV sets up the call routing on its end and then patches me into a number that its temporarily set aside for my call - that call has been connected to my real destination on their end.

People mention the same thing on incoming calls. That the caller ID they see comes up completely randomly, such that they can no longer use that ID to text or call someone back for instance.

I did hear that the GV client for Android is much better than the official client for iPhone, but I've also heard that the GVM+ I was trying was very good. I just don't see how the experience in Android can get around limitations that others are expressing online.

You mentioned that you could take your carrier out of the loop. How? Since GV doesn't itself have VOIP how can you actually place or receive a call? GV does routing but where will it route the call to/through?