Google+ is now coming to Google Voice

Google made a brief announcement today stating that Google Voice would be getting Google+ integration.

On the official Google Voice blog, we read that the two services will be linked by bringing information from your social Google+ circles into your Google Voice telephony account.

“To help make it even easier for you to organize your contacts, today we’re adding Google+ Circles to Google Voice,” writes Googler Tom Ford.

“Circles give you more control over how you manage your callers; for example, calls from your ‘Creepers’ circle can be sent straight to Voicemail, only your ‘College Buddies’ circle will hear you rap your voicemail greeting, or you can set your ‘Family’ circle to only ring your mobile phone.”

As Ford points out, it’s actually a highly useful integration with loads of use cases to make life easier for users of both Google-powered services.

Logged-in Google Voice users can now set up new groups, circles, and phone settings in the Groups and Circles tab on the Google Voice site.

This is just one more point in Google’s overarching plan to bring Google+ to every Google web app — or, more accurately, to unify many disparate logins and identities under a single, cohesive umbrella known as Google+. Concepts such as “circles” aren’t just for the social side of Google; they’re being included in every other relevant web app, as well.

In short, Google+ is becoming the “new mode of usage of Google” that its leaders envisioned.

“We have browsers, phones, self-driving cars, TVs,” said Google exec Bradley Horowitz in a recent VentureBeat interview. “In many ways, these products have grown up very autonomously and have veered off in different directions, and it’s clear that we can now rationalize them and make them coherent and accretive to each other.”

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