Oh well. Keeping my fingers crossed. GC has potential.

1. Actually integrating it into Google.

2. Giving GrandCentral a better name; maybe in theory it used to be a “good name” but I think there’s just something about it that’s slightly ‘blah’ & nondescript. How ’bout simple English: “Google Phone Manager”, “Google Phone Center”, “Google Communication Manager”, “Google Communication Center”, etc.

3. The obvious name “Google Phone Manager” would tell regular people (who don’t spend their time reading about every obscure service/startup) what it is. That alone would really pique interest. “Cool, so I can manage my phones? *click*”

4. After the new name, actually market/present it through Google’s services. …Especially services businesses use like Google Apps, AdSense/AdWords and Maps/reviews, to actually get businesses & people paying for accounts.

Google would have to be pretty shortsighted to not be planning the above route.

Ideally, it’d be great if people could keep/transfer (any) phone number — so nothing is dependent on GC service existing or not — like you can with mobile phones, toll free numbers, or even domain names: a real registry. That’s probably the future once most things are VoIP, but land lines are still important.

Anyway, the fact that people even have to /worry/ that GC could go away so easily is the #1 reason it will fail. Who’s going to bother using a GC number if it won’t be there in the future? GC is good. I’ve got a GC #. But I don’t use it. I won’t until I can actually trust that it’ll be there.