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MetroTalk will be ending service in 6 months by Google’s request

posted on Nov 4th 2013 by Joe Fedewa

MetroTalk

It’s a sad day for anyone that uses Google Voice with a Windows Phone device, and the culprit is once again big bad Google. MetroTalk, the best Google Voice app for Windows Phone, has just announced that they will be shutting down the app in six months due to a request by Google.

Here is the official statement from the MetroTalk website:

We are sad to announce that after a request by Google, MetroTalk will be removed from the Windows Phone store on May 1, 2014. We apologize to all our users for this but the decision is beyond our control, and in fact affects all third-party Google Voice apps. The good news is that the app will remain available and fully functional for 6 more months, and you can expect bug fix updates during that time. A huge thank you to all of our users for making us one of the top downloaded and highest rated apps of the Windows Phone store. Once again, we truly apologize to everyone affected by this.

From what we understand this is a decision by Google that will affect all 3rd-party apps, not just MetroTalk. The reason for this has to do with Google locking down on security in Google Voice. The Google Voice API was never publicly available, so this day was always a possibility. You have 6 months to make plans for future use.

How many of you use Google Voice?


About The Author
Joe Fedewa is a Contributing Editor for Winsource.com and has posted 2575 articles. .
  • Sam

    I just use Google Voice in the browser on Windows Phone, it isn’t ideal, but it works, I rarely ever use it for SMS, just for routing calls and the odd call back, back in the early iPhone days I used GV alot more and had to jail break my phone to use an unoffical GV app, before Google published their own app, but even after that I continued to use the 3rd Party GV app which was then allowed on the iTunes store, the 3rd Party app actually worked better than Google’s official app.

  • CoryRs

    I used to use google voice, but the number of lost calls and texts made me drop the service. Another google service I no longer use.

  • Luis Matoso

    Screw Google. I don’t understand why you’re wasting your time talking about this crap

  • CyberInferno

    This is such a bummer. Yet another sign that Google has gone from the company promoting openness to being completely closed-off.

    I still like the service. My workaround for this (which I already use) is to save people’s Google Voice-assigned numbers as their “Pager” numbers on their contacts. That way, I can text them without needing to use a third-party app, and their messages show up in my message history normally (except with their name before each message). I’ll just pin the GV site in case I need to message anyone new.

  • Luis Matoso

    Jesus, why do you people keep talking about google this & google that. Don’t you know about Youtube comments? Now to post a comment about any video on youtube you’re suppose to open a google+ account. Fu… google