In their quest to challenge Skype for the VoIP crown, the search engine giant is rolling out Google Voice to Gmail lovers (provided they live within a few countries).
Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.
Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (seecomparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.
Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone†at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. (Official Gmail Blog)
If you do not see the feature yet in your account, you can either wait 72 hours or activate it early by calling a number within your Gmail account (your results may vary).
Thus far, Google seems to be aiming at reducing Skype’s dominance in the world of VoIP by using its deep pockets to draw away Skypers (who have mocked Google’s attempts in the past).
Unfortunately for Google Voice, Skype current advantage lies with its video calling feature, not to mention the fact that the latter is available upon the iPhone thanks to iRage from Steve Jobs.
Originally posted on August 25, 2010 @ 1:28 pm
“Skype current advantage lies with its video calling feature” – Gmail also offers video calling to other Gmail users. So, um, that’s not really an advantage for Skype.
@ John: True, but in order to use it the other person has to be on Gmail at the same time. Skype can be used from an iPhone or video phone (or at least the former could via Fringe before they shut it down).
The new Gmail service doesn’t work