Over the next several weeks Google will begin to let new people in. But starting Thursday existing accounts are being given the option of switching to the new service and gett access to the new features. The freeze isn’t being lifted yet (and we’ve heard there are tens of thousands of people on the wait list). Most people have never used the service, because Google froze new accounts after the acquisition. Here’s our quick and dirty guide to using the old GrandCentral. The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for life.” Grand Central gives you one phone number that can access all your numbers, whether they be cell, home, mobile, and work numbers the GrandCentral numbers stay the same, as many of these number change over the course of a user’s lifetime. Key new features have been added that make the service absolutely compelling (each is described below). Now, though, Google is ready to fully launch Grand Central/Google Voice. Like most Google acquisitions, the service has been rebuilt from the ground up, a lengthy process that has in the past taken an average of 16 months or so. The 21 month delay between acquisition and relaunch was, unfortunately, expected. Get ready for that to change as the service prepares for a public launch under a new product name: Google Voice. Other than a few good natured jabs at their marketing gimmicks and coverage of outages, that is. GrandCentral, a phone management service that first launched in 2006 and was acquired by Google for $50+ million in 2007, hasn’t been in the news much lately.

Google voice phone number database