A new Google Voice is coming soon

The product's new features have not been made clear yet. Photo / 123RF

I use Google Voice, and if you're running a small business it's likely that you do too.

Google Voice is free and a great service for receiving, storing, transcribing and sharing voice mail messages. I use it as my primary voicemail for my smartphone and get my messages emailed and texted to me -I'd be lost without it.

Many business owners, particularly freelancers and solo-preneurs, use it for outbound calling too. Did I mention that it's free?

Unfortunately, it seems that Google Voice has been mostly ignored over the past few years. Google's been wrapped up with its other video communication systems like Hangouts, Allo and Duo and didn't seem to have the time give its more popular Voice Over IP phone service an upgrade.

So there's good news: TechCrunch reports that a significant update is about to be rolled out.

This is something long overdue since, according to TechCrunch, the last notable update was in 2015, and its mobile app hasn't been upgraded since the first half of last year.

In recent years, several competitors have appeared on the scene to offer similar features, particularly popular ones like having a phone number that can ring a user anywhere along with excellent transcription and filtering options.

No surprise that more individuals, entrepreneurs and business owners have gravitated towards these better options.

As much as I'm looking forward to this upgrade, I'm disappointed that the company hasn't shared what new features we can be expecting. But, as Sarah Perez points out in her TechCrunch report "Google's strategy with regards to its communications apps has been messy, so it will be interesting to see what the new Google Voice entails.

The company has a number of communication products, which seem to be in a constant state of flux."

Like many other small business owners, I've evaluated some of the mobile communications apps and found them to be enticing--but not enough to draw me away from Google Voice... yet. Let's hope this upgrade keeps us happy.