Pick up the phone. Its Google
Friday, August 27, 2010
Google announced Wednesday that it is now offering the ability to make phone calls through its Gmail service.
The new calling feature allows users to place phone calls to landlines and cell phones directly from Gmail using Voice over Internet Protocol technology.
According to Google software engineer Robin Schriebman, the new feature can be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a call to a restaurant to placing a call in an area with bad reception.
This is the natural progression from Google’s nearly two-year-old Gmail voice and
video chat, which requires both users to be sitting in front of a computer and signed into Gmail at the same time.
“Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?’” Schriebman wrote in a blog post.
This new feature places Google in direct competition with other companies in the
VoIP market, including industry leader Skype, whose users have made 6.4 million minutes worth of calls in the first half of 2010, according to Skype’s website.
