One of the more useful features of Google Voice is the ability to send text messages through the original number and messaging application of your phone. Unfortunately, Google Voice is now set to lose this messaging capability soon.
By sending messages, Google Voice can send a copy of your incoming messages to your phone number on your service provider, and you can even reply to this text message directly to your SMS reply without opening the Google Voice app. In a similar process, these messages can also be sent to your email address.
An update to the Google Voice app, version 2021.10, started rolling out today via the Play Store, and in it, our APK Insight team discovered a line indicating that messages are being sent after the strike. So far, the notification does not appear to be directly in the Android or web applications.
Forwarding messages to linked numbers will stop working soon.
Following this discovery, we found that the support page on Google Voice’s messaging has been updated to share the unfortunate announcement as well.
Important: The forwarding of messages to linked numbers will soon stop because mobile service providers have started blocking these messages.
As far as we can understand from the short notice, some mobile phone providers have started blocking the incoming messages from the “shadow numbers” that drive Google Voice’s forwarding feature. Carrier blocking is likely to be part of ongoing efforts to eliminate spam calls and messages, and Google seems likely to stop forwarding rather than working with specific service providers.
No specific timeline has been shared for when Google plans to override this particular feature of Voice. It is important that the forwarding of emails should continue to work normally and not be affected by this change.
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