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An interesting perk to the Chromebook is Google Voice, which is directly tied to the Gmail account. Google started the telephony services in March 2009 when it purchased the service GrandCentral. In 2011 Google Voice was available to the UK and other countries. However, today many features of Google Voice are folded into Google Hangouts. There is a simple instructive guide here that can be found on Google Voice Wikihow (http://www.wikihow.com/Set-Up-Google-Voice). I used my Google Voice account as a means to protect my real phone number from certain people. However, are there alternatives to this popular service?
Phonebooth, Magic Jack, and other cloud phone providers are available with free services. Yet the free services offerings are slim, and are mostly designed to entice a person into a paid monthly subscription. Sumit Chauhan wrote an editorial that highlights 17 Google Voice competitors, at compsmags.com. For the sake of simplicity, I will review any of the 17 services that offer a number that uses WiFi Calling and are Linux compliant.
After surveying the 17 alternatives from the list, the only 2 that support Ubuntu are Viber and Skype. Viber also supports Fedora, and other RPM based distros. Skype recently came into the folds for Linux. Surprisingly there is a third option called Freetone which is available in the Google Play Store, which means this could become a direct replacement for Google Voice on the Chrome OS. My Toshiba Chromebook will get Google Play Store later on this year. Skype has plenty of consumer recognition, but Viber has very little. I do not use Skype, and probably will not since it is a part of Microsoft.
I am using Peppermint 7 OS on my laptop, so I opted for the Viber Debian download link. I installed the programs, and no secondary Wifi phone number was available. However it does offer free texting and calls to other Viber members.
So I ventured into trying Freetone on my Android Smartphone. Freetone does not have a Linux desktop feature like Google Voice. Yet it does offer a secondary WiFi phone number. I can make phone calls and receive voicemail to this number. If you are a heavy texter, then use Freetext instead to use as a WiFi phone number.
There is one catch to using Freetone or Freetext, the services are not entirely free. The company relies on its users to watch mobile ads so the end user can accrue account credit. This credit is then used to pay off the WiFi phone use. However these services are tied only to your smartphone. Google Voice can be tied to your smartphone and landline.
So there are alternatives to Google Voice, but none of the services are totally free. There are other alternatives such as Freedompop and Grasshopper in the USA that offer a paid and professional service. Yet in the end Google Voice offers the most services for the price.