Google reportedly plans to merge Voice with Hangouts

The creeping shadow that is Google+ is about to touch one of the company’s most beloved products: Google Voice. The company’s free VoIP phone-call, texting, voicemail and voicemail-transcription product will soon merge with the Google+ Hangouts apps on both iOS and Android, leading to the complete elimination of Google Voice as a separate service.

We’ve heard that Google Voice is getting dragged to the trash can and most of its functionality will be incorporated into the G+ Hangouts apps on both Android and iOS. This has already happened to an extent with the ability to phone friends on Hangouts, but we’re hearing the full shuttering and depreciation of the app is the next step. What’s interesting here is that VoIP-to-phones is expected to be integrated into the Hangouts iOS and Android apps so that, just like with the Web version, you could be able to actually make (and receive) VoIP calls directly from your Google phone number. Whether the carriers and Apple are okay with this isn’t certain, and the thought is that it could be enabled by carrier like Apple’s FaceTime (or could be scrapped altogether) depending on the global market and the carrier.