The creeping shadow that is Google+ is about to touch one of the company's most beloved products: Google Voice.

The company's free VoIP phone-call, texting, voicemail and voicemail-transcription product will soon merge with the Google+ Hangouts apps on both iOS and Android, leading to the complete elimination of Google Voice as a separate service, according to 9to5Mac. See also: Google Voice Mistaken Identity Leads to Epic Exchange Argh... seriously WTF Google. You will not force me into G+/Hangouts no matter how hard to try. I don't want it.... http://t.co/LO7W6UHo1j — Brian Gaudenti (@bgaudenti) March 19, 2014 NOOOOOOOOO-Google plans to kill Google Voice in coming months, integrate features into Hangouts http://t.co/7xZjuELZWh — Mr. Mazurek (@mrmazurek) March 19, 2014 Not relevant to non-US folks, but as someone who relies on Google Voice as my primary number, this is concerning: http://t.co/T3ZlHgGzWi — dash (@dashgopinath) March 19, 2014 The rumored change is particularly interesting in the wake of Monday's Google Hangouts outage, an episode that won't likely inspire user confidence in a possible Google Voice move to Hangouts.

But despite the reported move taking some users by surprise, a key Google employee actually hinted at such a change over a year ago.

Posting on his Google+ page last May, Google+ product manager Nikhyl Singhal wrote, "Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.﻿"

There's no word on when the reported change will take place, but the upcoming Google I/O conference, just a couple of months away, could be a perfect stage on which to launch the next phase of Hangouts and Google+.