21 August 2007

GrandCentral, a VoIP startup acquired by Google earlier this year, has been forced to abandon its "one number for life" pledge for a small number of users, representatives acknowledged late Monday.

A Google spokesman said the company "sincerely apologize[s] for the inconvenience."

"We want to reassure all of our users that we remain committed to providing 'one number for life' that they can count on," a representative said in a statement. "We are taking steps to avoid any similar issues in the future."

Sites like TechCrunch began noticing blog postings complaining about the outages on Monday. Users were sent notices that their own number would be phased out in the near future, and replaced with a new Google number.