Review by PX Eliezer 
member for 4.7 years, 2568 visits, last login: 117 days ago
updated 1.7 years ago
 Hutt River
 Contract price not specified.  about 1 days "Useful for receiving incoming calls from GoogleVoice." "Frozen in time after Google bought it, no new signups, neglected." "Late on a Friday afternoon, Google killed it (4 March 2011)."
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It is quite some time now since Gizmo5 was bought by Google.
While it is useful for receiving inbound calls from GoogleVoice, everything at Gizmo5 seems to be in cryogenic deep-freeze.
There are no new signups, tech support appears non-existent, quality is deteriorating, and the website remains quite primitive.
Outbound calls (these are paid calls on Gizmo5) take a long time to connect, and tollfree outbound calls are not connecting at all, at least in my experience. This is using an IP phone---perhaps Asterisk users have a better outcome.
Does Google really know what they want to do with Gizmo5?
It's a sad end to what originally began as the innovative SIPphone service.
***UPDATE: (4 March 2011)***
Today is the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln's inauguration (yes, we used to begin the presidential term on March 4th). It is also the Friday afternoon on which Google quietly killed Gizmo5. RIP.
***COMMENTARY: (4 September 2011)***
GIZMO-5 used the unused area code of "747" for their numbers.
But that started to be a REAL California area code, which would lead to conflicts and confusion, especially because GIZMO-5 used that pseudo-"747" on outbound CID.
Google, the new owners of GIZMO-5, did NOT make plans to deal with this issue.
The answer is clear in retrospect----
Google knew that they were killing GIZMO-5.
Because of that, there was no need to deal with the problem.
This demonstrates that Google planned WAY in advance to kill GIZMO-5.
Comments:
  tallship
join:2011-03-18
Hermosa Beach, CA | Too bad, so sad... Bye Bye I suppose that I should mentione 'something' about Gizmo5.
I liked SipPhone, back in the day, a real pioneering adventure. But Gizmo, well, I found it to be second rate, expensive, and then they started limiting time until all you could do was test with it - even after Google bought it.
But from the acquisition I've been very happy w/GoogleVoice, and although Gizmo did provide a gateway and a bit of redundancy, I never really used it much once my GV kicked into action.
There were many other VoIP systems out there that were more direct, superior, and easier to use than Gizmo, IMNSHO.
Good looking softphone though  | |
| | | Time To Move On... I picked up an old SunRocket VOIP box at Goodwill and reprogrammed it to use Sipgate instead. You can find free VOIP providers out there but Sipgate is cheap and it works well. | |
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