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Google adds telecommunications to Gmail

26 August 2010 , Written by Dhruv Tanwar
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After voice and video chat, the humble telephone too, has come to Gmail.

Over the years, Google has worked to make communication easy, first making Gmail, then adding voice and video chat capabilities to it. Now, it has taken away of the necessity of being present in front of a computer to communicate by creating a feature that allows Gmail users to make a phone call, straight from the browser.

Now, users in the US can call any phone straight from Gmail. “Calls to the US 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 with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute,” Google said on its official blog.


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“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,” said Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer, on the blog. Google internal testing claims to have found the feature exceptionally useful, specially when placing a call from an area with bad reception, or making a quick call to the restaurant. The service uses the Google Voice phone number for outbound caller ID, and also allows for calls to be received on this number inside Gmail.

The feature is being enabled for US-based Gmail users in the coming days, while the rest of the world, including Google Apps users, will have to wait longer for it to arrive.

 

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