In its latest move towards becoming a veritable communications industry contender, Google Inc. has acquired GrandCentral Communications, which provides voice management services such as single-number reach, unified messaging and Web control. Like previous Google innovations, GrandCentral's services are only available in the US, but the acquisition is one of many that the Mountain View CA search engine company has made in the communications field. Earlier this year Google started an experimental voice search system. The firm also partnered with mobile phone manufacturers LG Electronics and Samsung to pre-install Google mapping, email and blog-management applications on handsets. Last November Google acquired the user-generated video site YouTube. And last August Google unveiled Google Apps for Your Domain, which lets website administrators serve email, voice, instant messaging and calendaring applications to end users.

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