I have read through many threads and did not see this one mentioned.

GoogleVoice does not contain listed numbers, and can be accessed in many different ways that are not usually thought of. It allows people to:

- Keep a phone number that shows up as a landline and can't be searched/reverse engineered even through a paid service.

- You can text from a GoogleVoice icon that has a password.

- You can log in on a computer and text from a browser and make multi task between browser types (Firefox for the obvious views and another i.e Chrome for your texting)

- It is accessed separately but yet tied to one's email.

- If one chooses, one does not need to use the GoogleVoice icon. One can choose to log in on the phone using the web browser to text with anyone.

- The Google phone number will never show a name if you dial out or someone calls you using that kind of service.

- You can look at a phone bill all you want. The only thing you will see is a number that can't be traced, except if you call it and the person has a personalized greeting for voicemail.

So next time you look at a look at browser history - look more closely for www.google.com/voice as a log in page. And, when you are coming up empty for a reverse search on a phone number and it shows up as a landline but you can't seem to get the owner's information through a paid search service, it may very well be a Google Voice number. I will post more about this if I remember other items to look out for.