MIAMI – After transcripts of some voice mail messages from Google Voice users appeared in search results, Google Inc. has modified the telephony management service to prevent this from happening, the company said.
Since its launch in March, Google Voice allowed users to post voice mail transcripts on public Web pages, so that they could share the content of the messages with others.
While Google Voice users will be able to continue this practice, the voice mail text will now be off-limits to search engine crawlers.
“We can certainly understand people would want to make their voice mails public on their own sites, but not necessarily searchable directly outside of their own website. We made a change to prevent these voice mails from being crawled so their content will not be indexed,” a Google spokeswoman said via e-mail.
Google apparently implemented the change in late September, according to an entry in the Google Voice Help Forum.
However, the issue came to light earlier this month when technology news site Engadget spotted some of the voice mail transcripts in search results.
When Google acquired it in July 2007, Voice was called GrandCentral. At the time, Google closed new registrations to the service. Google relaunched it with the new name in March this year, but still kept it as a private beta available only via invitations from Google. Earlier this month, Google started allowing existing users to invite a small number of their friends to join.
