For those of you who have been following Google and telecom for the last couple of years, you know that Google owns Skype and purchased a telecom startup called Grand Central a couple of years ago. Google has now changed the name of Grand Central to Google Voice and is getting ready to go main stream with it. In a few weeks, Google customers should be able to start signing up for their free Google Voice accounts.

Google Voice has some cool features, but, if you’re paranoid, these features might also freak you out a bit. Google’s new service will issue you a new phone number, and that number will be able to be set to ring to all of your current phone numbers and track you down. The service also has the ability to take phone messages, turn them into written transcripts and email them to you. This will give you the ability to search your text voice mail content, which is cool and scary at the same time.

It’s cool, because with this service it will be really easy to organize your life, but the scary part may just be more than most people will be interested in subjecting themselves to. Since Google’s ToS says they pretty much own anything you do when you use their free services, they may own your voice, the content of the voice mails you get and they will also have the ability to data mine your voice mails if they so choose. I don’t know about you, but that scares the bejesus out of me.

For a good article on the whole thing, visit Csmonitor.com.