Google recently grabbed online phone service, GrandCentral, which I have seen news articles referring to as the “Holy Grail” of phone services because it offers you “One Number That Rings All Your Phones” and “One Voicemail Box: All Your Messages In One Place.”

In other words, Google is offering you the One Ring. Will you accept the charges?

Before you decide, take a good look at the language being used on their features page. My two favorites go hand-in-hand:

ListenIn™ - Hear why someone is calling before taking the call

Call Record - Record calls on the fly and access recordings online

Hear that? Listen in? Call record? In case you forgot, it’s already legal for the government to listen in and record your calls so long as they merely *suspect* you of being a terrorist. They don’t even need a warrant. (Plus, they can also turn on your cell phone - even if it’s not open - and listen to conversations picked up by its microphone, nevermind triangulate your location, and look at whose phone signals are clustered together in physical proximity, ie “hanging out”)

So is that somehow Google’s fault? Certainly not. Although, their stated mission as a corporation - after all - is to index all of the world’s information. And in order to do that, they want to make sure that you save your web history with them, that you never delete an email message you send or receive, that they have access to all files and photos on your computer, and now that they will have all of your phone records correlated together in one handy place too. What’s left?

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them