Hello y'all...
I abandoned the forum months ago, after it generally descended into endless speculation, conspiracy theories, and mis-information, and above all, obnoxious behavior by a few people in posts about Google Voice. I resisted returning here, but given that a new frenzy of speculation has been whipped up, let me try to offer you the most current, accurate information you will get, other than from an employee of Obihai or Google.
I realize that Obihai and Google are largely responsible for fueling this behavior. I have only read a couple of posts here lately that even come close to being accurate, and so I have returned to provide some credible information.
Why should you believe me? I am the leading "Top Contributor" on the Google Voice Forum, with over 17 thousand posts. I am part of a Google-sponsored program that helps
volunteers like me help the Google user community. We have access to certain engineering and technical staff at Google, and we have signed non-disclosure agreements that limit what we can say. Google employees, in general, are forbidden to discuss future plans. There are valid reasons for this, not only for competitive business reasons, but due to certain restrictions placed on public corporations by the SEC and other Federal regulators. This is why you
will never get a direct answer from anyone at Google about anything that hasn't already been announced.Now, that said, I am willing to stretch my NDA to the limit, in the interest of clearing this up.
Google Voice, by itself, has no VoIP client capability. It never had it, and it still doesn't have it, as of today. From the user (client) perspective, GV is only a PSTN telephone call forwarding and message management system. GV used its companion service, Google Chat, as the VoIP client, using XMPP as the signaling protocol. As you all have discovered by now, Google told various third-party software and hardware vendors that direct access to Google Chat and its XMPP protocol was going to be shut down, and it would not be available for use after May 15th. Around April 15th, I personally confirmed, directly with Google employees, that the shut-down was on track for May 15th. At some point between those two dates, Google postponed the shut-down, for undisclosed reasons. I can't discuss the "why" reason behind that decision. It is completely pointless to speculate on why it was postponed; there is nothing nefarious to read into it, and let me make it very clear that there was no lying, sneaky, malicious intent by either Google or by Obihai in making that announcement, nor in Obihai doing the responsible thing by encouraging its customers to move onto a SIP ITSP instead of GV. There were several issues: in particular, one was the security exposure discussed in (intentionally) vague terms by Google, and the other was the impending demise of Chat, to be superseded by Hangouts.
So, since then, users have continued to use GV, emulating a Google Chat client over XMPP, and Obihai published the most forthright statement they could, acknowledging that the date came and went, for some reason, unknown to Obihai, but the recommendation still stood, to select an alternative provider. Why did Obihai say this? Because a) they didn't know why the date came and went, and b) they rightly believed that this was a temporary situation, and c) they didn't want to hitch their future solely on GV support.
Meanwhile, Obihai continued to explore and develop alternative ways to make use of Google services. Again, I am under a confidentiality agreement with Obihai, and I can't disclose further details. However, in parallel with the development of the new OBi 1032 IP phone, Obihai updated the firmware on the phone, and on the 1xx and 2xx ATA products, to change the method used to authenticate to a user's Google account. This was the "security concern" described by Google. The old method, as you will recall, actually required the user to enter their Google user name and password on the OBiTALK portal, or on their device, to log into Google Chat. The new method recently pushed out by Obihai uses a more secure, published and approved protocol known as OAUTH 2.0. This is the same method used when you go to some third-party website, that offers to "sign in using your Google account", and it is similar to the method used by Facebook and by Microsoft, to give controlled access, with a user's permission, to defined information. OAUTH never gives the third party your Google user ID or password. Instead, you log into your own Google account directly, and then the third party requests permission to access defined information on your Google account. You give permission to Google directly, which then exchanges "access tokens" with the third party. This is the pop-up window you will now see when you add GV as a service provider. Look for "OAUTH" in the URL string. You can confirm that your device has been updated, by listening for a female, vs. male, "auto attendant" voice.
Here is the official announcement by Google, that support for direct client login to a Google user's account is deprecated:
https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/AuthForInstalledAppsThe replacement for direct client login is OAUTH 2.0 authentication, which Obihai has now implemented in its devices.
Note that there is
absolutely no such thing as a Google-administered "Approved Service Provider" program for GV. Google has merely published certain APIs for authentication (OAUTH 2.0) and communication (XMPP), and Obihai is making use of them. Google has no objection to Obihai using their service,
as long as the current authentication method is used, and, in fact, several Googlers have posted their positive comments on Google+. Just make your own informed decision to use, or don't use, the service.
Google is working hard to combine the user interfaces and functions of the Google Voice and Google Hangouts services. Google Voice is
not going away. Google has recently made a significant financial investment in adding more DID numbers to the service, and in improving its ability to port in other numbers, and it is actively fixing bugs and improving the reliability of the service. I have been personally involved with Google staff in identifying and squashing bugs and rapidly solving user issues that used to go on for months or even years, and this has convinced me that Google remains committed to Voice. Google is also working hard to remove confusion and redundancy in the two services, Voice and Hangouts. Recent improvements to GV have begun to better-integrate Hangouts into the GV user interface. One example is adding Hangouts as a selection when making calls from GV. Another is the recent implementation of WebRTC Hangouts calling on Chrome Browser, eliminating the need for the XMPP plugin. Over time, you will see more integration of the two services.
It is also important to understand that Obihai is not the one-trick pony you may have seen when you bought a magic Google Voice OBi 1xx box for hobbyist or DIY use. It is now wisely investing in products and services for the SIP ITSP and business PBX market. The OBi IP phone is a perfect example of this. It is not intended to be a consumer-level GV Phone. It is not some DIY hacker project device. You, the typical Obi forum inhabitant, are not the target market for this product, and most of the opinions I've read about it on this forum, so far, have been off-the-mark. It's a business-class product, mainly targeted at system integrators, resellers, and large office deployments. Its feature set and price align closely with comparable (not entry-level) products from Cisco and Avaya, and it is not comparable to the simpler, less-sophisticated SOHO products from the Chinese vendors. I have been beta testing the phone for weeks now, and I believe it is a strong competitor and a very well-engineered product. It combines the full feature set of a OBi 202 with all the capabilities of a high-end business IP PBX-connected phone.
Finally, here is my personal prediction, based on what I know, and limited by what I can disclose: Obihai knows that GV interoperability is a powerful selling point. They are working (using the proper API framework, not as hackers) on adapting to the changes with GV and Hangouts that I just described. Eventually, I am optimistic that you will see a clearer answer, and a fuller, more future-proof set of Google-related services from Obihai.
I hope this helps. I am not interested in troll-battles, and I will vanish again if the discussion degenerates. As always, if you have GV-specific problems or questions, we're happy to help over on the Google Voice Forum, however, none of us will comment on whether or not a product, service or specific feature will or will not change.