When Google Voice emerged in 2009, I was one of the first to sign up. Ditto for Google Fi. But last month I left them both at the same time, turning my back on an astonishing fifteen years of integrated service. Why? Because Google turned its back on me and I was tired of dealing with its hypocrisy.
A little context, if you don’t know. Google Voice is the company’s number forwarding service and it was extremely cool when it first debuted. You were given your own new phone number, which Google operated as a free VOIP service, and you could use it with any existing phone number or number. It can basically replace your standard mobile or landline number, and give you access to text messages via a special app on your phone or the internet. For someone who reviews phones and doesn’t want to constantly change SIM cards, it’s great.
Google Fi is the mobile virtual network operator of Google, a branded carrier that competes (in smaller ways) with companies like AT&T and Verizon. It lets you buy your cell service at the same place you buy Pixel phones, more or less, and it offers some pretty good deals if you’re okay with leaning on T-Mobile’s smaller network as a backbone. It’s especially nice if you happen to be a Pixel Watch owner (and I am). I will add that both Google Voice and Google Fi are only available to users in the United States, although the latter has good international roaming options.
I liked both Voice and Fi for a long time, especially as someone who reviewed phones professionally. Voice in particular allowed me to text and call from a laptop or desktop PC long before more widespread options became available. Fi, like T-Mobile, was generally great and more affordable as long as I was within city limits. So why did I make a sharp, clean break with Google’s management of my mobile connections?
It wasn’t because of Google’s privacy concerns, although they certainly abound. It’s not because I think my new cell carrier, Verizon, is somehow better or less bad. That’s not it. No, I was tired of Google ignoring its voice service, especially in light of a very public campaign against Apple. Between that and some dramatic interoperability issues, I started looking for less aggravating pastures.
Google is harassing Apple to support RCS
Remember when Google pestered Apple to add RCS capabilities to the iPhone? I certainly do. Google has been publicly pushing Apple to adopt the modern SMS standard and finally achieve more fluid communication between iMessage and other platforms (particularly SMS on Android) for more than a calendar year. It even made a little celebratory commercial when the iPhone started playing nice, allowing better support for things like emoji reactions, group text features, and high-quality photo and video sharing.
So given Google’s extremely public support for cross-platform RCS, why the ever loving heck Does Google Voice not support RCS?
Yes, even though Google Voice has been around for fifteen years, long before Google’s unified messaging SMS app for Android, Voice still doesn’t support RCS messaging. If you use Voice on Android (or anywhere else, including iPhone!), you’re left with terrible photos and the “Ted like this message” response that Google complained about just three months ago. This doesn’t just happen between Voice users and iPhone users, it even happens when you use and chat with Voice other Android users.
As a texting platform, Google Voice is a crazy dinosaur.
I certainly don’t need to explain why Google’s lack of RCS support on any of its own phone products looks bad. And I’m not the only one with this complaint. Both regular users and my tech journalists have been pointing out this inconsistency for years. While Google Voice is limping along with minimal updates, apparently avoiding it the infamous Google graveyard thanks to some nice enterprise integrations, it definitely feels like the users have been left behind.
Google tried – and failed – to create a walled messaging garden
But even that isn’t what really irritates me. It’s Google’s holier-than-thou attitude. Google pushed Apple to acquire RCS, implying it is doing so on behalf of the roughly half of the market that uses Android. And while Android users certainly want to be able to chat with iPhone users more fluidly, that’s not the driving factor behind Google’s campaign.
The truth is that iMessage has a real appeal on the iPhone, especially for younger users who have turned the “Android green text” into a scarlet letter. And that’s a subtle threat to Android. I think Google fears iMessage as a product much more than it altruistically wants to improve messaging across the board.
Petter Ahrnstedt
Do you want more proof? Google would absolutely kill to get into Apple’s position with iMessage. Because it tried to get there multiple times, with multiple chat services. Google Talk. Google Voice. Google Wave, with its own built-in chat service a la Facebook. Google Buzz. Google+, again with a chat component. Google Hangouts. Google Allo. Google Chat (that’s what people called Talk for the longest time). And that was the list from three years ago, excluding ‘Messages’ as an app-slash platform on Android, Chrome, and the web.
Google has been trying to create a communication garden for thirty years, with varying degrees of walls. And it failed. So it’s hard to see the push against Apple’s iMessage as anything other than sour grapes. Don’t get me wrong: Google pushing Apple to achieve at least some interoperability with RCS is indeed a win for users and consumers. But Google only did this after years of exhausting all possible options to extend its monopolistic practices into this area as well.
Google Voice and Google Fi couldn’t work together
So yeah, it was creepy to see Google pretending to be the people’s champion of open messaging after Voice users had been begging for RCS for years. When my sister welcomed her first child and I suddenly became interested in higher quality photos and videos, I started looking for a way out. (For the record: my sister is Also an Android and Pixel user of over a decade – see why this is so frustrating for us, Google?)
So a few years ago, while still using Google Voice and Google Fi, I tried to port my Voice number to Fi. Although Google Voice is a VOIP service, in theory it should be like porting a number from one carrier to another. Google Fi was app agnostic and should have supported RCS. I would have to switch apps from Voice to Messages, but it would finally work.
That didn’t happen. So the porting process. There is a fairly simple tool online that allows you to port your number to Google Fi, but for whatever reason it won’t accept my Voice number. “Not eligible for transfer.” I wasn’t completely shocked by this, as the VOIP nature of the Google Voice number sometimes causes headaches. Some banks and services like Uber don’t like it, and for that reason I’ve had to use my backup (the number attached). to my physical SIM card) occasionally. Others have encountered the same problem when trying to move a number from Voice to Fi.

Michael Crider/Foundry
So I placed a support ticket with Google Fi, the incarnation of Google I’d been paying $60 a month for for years, and waited. And waited. And waited. For a year. And nothing happened. And nothing happened another year.
Fast forward to December 2024. I’m looking back on a two-week vacation trip to rural Texas, during which many photos and videos will be shared. I’m trying to transfer my Google Voice number to Google Fi again. It won’t work. The automated system doesn’t say how or why number porting doesn’t work, only that it’s not available for that number, an experience that’s apparently so common that there’s a warning on the support page: “Please note that some Google Voice numbers may will not be transferred to Google Fi.”
Why? How? Is there still hope for those affected? No idea. I grit my teeth and prepare to actually contact a human who works for Google.
I’ll start with Google Fi because again, they’re the ones I pay. I’m asking if there is a reason why Google Voice numbers can’t be ported. They say no. I’ll try again and show proof that it doesn’t work. They would bring someone from Google Voice into the call (allegedly because this is all done in a text-based interface, and for all I know it could be the same person). The Google Voice person is trying to port. It doesn’t work.
The phone number I’ve been using for fifteen years is apparently tied to Voice, a zombie platform that doesn’t support the RCS features that Google itself publicly advocates. Out of frustration (and yes, I admit, not a little bit of Karen-style entitlement), I ask the Voice customer service rep when Google Voice will add RCS support, and even link it to the videos from that same public Google campaign.
The service representative apologizes, but has no information about plans to add RCS support to Google Voice. In short, a Google texting service refuses to implement the texting standards that Google requires from Apple, nor can it convert a very basic phone service into another Google service.
Google doesn’t deserve your loyalty
At this point I’ll cross my fingers to the Verizon Wireless website, which has a tool that allows you to test whether or not you can import your number to the carrier. You do not need to sign up for an account. According to this website, it can accept my Google Voice number, VOIP warts and all, and let me set up an eSIM in just a few minutes.

Pictured: Not me, not my phone, not my computer. But exactly the emotion I felt when I tried to use a Google product with another Google product.
Anna Tarazhevich/Pexels
So I did it. I’m now using Verizon and am not particularly happy with it – somehow Verizon managed to immediately sign me up for the service without actually having a Verizon account, and I had to drive to a store to get my first bill to pay.
But I keep the phone number I’ve used for 15 years, now disconnected from any Google service, and I get high-resolution photos and videos from my sister and brother-in-law. And Verizon has certainly never pretended to be a champion of open standards. Why was Verizon able to port the number without any problems, while Google couldn’t do it from one proprietary service to another? I have no idea. I literally begged Google to tell me in several years, but it couldn’t.
I fully admit that this article is a bit of therapeutic whining on my part. But I know there are other Voice and Fi users who have the same complaints. To you I say: try to get rid of Google. No company deserves your loyalty, and hypocrisy and apathy makes Google even less so.
Leave a Reply