Google users can now make phone calls directly from their Gmail inbox, the company announced Wednesday.
The new feature is fully integrated into the Google Chat interface that’s already in Gmail, and users can search their Google contacts and make phone calls to those people the same way they can currently launch a chat session or a video chat session.
Pricing is cheap — calls to the U.S. and Canada are free, and PC-to-phone calls to dozens of countries around the world are only two cents per minute. If you’re routing Google Voice to your mobile phone, rates for calls to the United Kingdom, France, India, Spain and Mexico are all under 20 cents per minute.
“We went through a couple of exercises when figuring our how to price it,” says Google product manager for group communications Craig Walker. He says they wanted to make it competitive with other PC-to-phone technologies, like Skype.
The new feature should roll out to everyone over the next day. To see if you have the new feature, look for the new “Call Phone” link and icon at the top of your chat contact list in Gmail.
One of the benefits of the hosted, web-based app is the ability for the company to roll out small changes to users one by one. Gmail has been slowly gaining additional communication features to augment its e-mail inbox ever since its launch in 2004. Google Chat, the web-based instant messaging system, was added shortly after Gmail’s launch. In 2008, Google added voice and video chat to Gmail. Recently, the company added the ability for users to switch between accounts on the fly.
Using the new calling feature is easy and intuitive. A telephone key pad pops up. Call any number, either by clicking on the numbers, typing in a number or copying and pasting in a number from the web. Type a name to search your contact list and you’ll see suggestions as you type, just like you’re addressing an e-mail. Hit enter and the phone dials.
In the demo we were given, the call quality was excellent. Walker says Google’s engineers have done extensive work on echo cancellation techniques to improve quality over a microphone and PC speaker. To our ears, it’s about as clear as Skype and better than most mobile phones.
In most instances, the calling feature behaves just like any other phone. It does have some of the special features already in Google Voice, such as voicemail transcription, custom greetings, SMS-to-email service and call screening.
Incoming calls can be sent directly to any of the phones you have registered with Google Voice, or they can be sent directly to Google Chat in the browser — a welcome feature for those stuck in an area with lousy cell coverage.
The company says the new Google Voice isn’t available to Google Apps customers yet, just consumer Gmail for now.
Oddly, Google doesn’t have a definite name for the new feature, and the company reps we spoke too weren’t sure whether it was its own feature or a product within a feature.
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