Google Inside

Google is partnering with the city of San Francisco, nearby their headquarters, to offer free voicemail to the homeless that reside within San Francisco. Google is doing this through their acquisition of GrandCentral late last year.

The announcement that Google was going to offer this free service to those in need was made only a month after they acquired GrandCentral. Making an announcement so shortly after acquiring a new company, or product rather, leads me to believe that they had a hidden agenda already to get some good PR about this.

GrandCentral had already been operating Project CARE since April of 2006, but Google’s hand will help speed things up dramatically.

This is, I believe, a great thing that Google is doing in conjunction with GrandCentral. Given, GrandCentral is owned by Google, it’s still a great decision to finally push forward with this.

This remark stuck out to me from the MSNBC article. “The move by the city and the company would allow someone to be able to fill out a job application, which asks for a call back number.” I will not say I’m guilt-free of it, but I know that sometimes I think to myself “why can’t they just go get a job,” and now, Google is helping that become a reality.

I cannot even begin to imagine ever being homeless, so I will not say that I know it’s a hard life or try to make up something about what they are going through. Google is doing something simple, yet profound, to exert effort in an attempt to change one life at a time.

source: msnbc.com - image courtesy of photographyblog.com