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Google to allow phone calls via Gmail
26 August 2010
Gmail users, at least in the US, will be able to make free calls to North American numbers and cheap calls to other places
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Google is allowing users of Gmail to call telephones directly from their email. From today, the company is expected to allow calls to home phones and mobile phones directly from Gmail for the first time. Google already offers computer-to-computer voice and video chat services, but this new service is expected to offer strong competition with services such as Skype.
The search engine company will provide free calls to the US and Canadian phones from Gmail for the rest of 2010 and charge low rates for calls made to other countries. Calls from the US to the UK, France, Germany, China and Japan will cost 2 cents per minute.
At the moment service will be available only to Gmail users outside the US. Google Voice, the company’s existing phone offer, has also been limited to US customers.
Google software engineer Robin Schriebman says in a post http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/call-phones-from-gmail.html on Google's blog: "We’re rolling out this feature to US based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once 'Call Phones' shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already)."
But he hints that it will become more widely available, though does not give details.
Calls that cost money will be charged from an online account that users can top up with a credit card. The service will not be available for making outgoing calls on mobile phones as other Google applications already cater to that market. GTB