Just a couple of days ago Google was announcing that it had added a voice calling feature to its Gmail service. Gmail users were thus able to make free voice calls to landline and mobile numbers from the US and Canada. On top of that, they could also call numbers in other countries for a certain fee. Google’s service, in many ways similar to what Skype currently has to offer (both as functionality and as pricing) was obviously expected to be a great success. Since it was a newly introduced feature, a huge number of Gmail users rushed to take advantage of free voice calling. This is why Gmail’s phone calling feature recorded over one million phone calls all made in the first 24 hours from the release. Google has announced this newly set milestone via Twitter.
Now, this news doesn’t come as a surprise. Most people were enthusiastic to try out the new feature incorporated into Gmail. There are also about 175 million monthly users on Gmail so compared to that number a million phone calls placed sounds like little, to be honest.
The feature, which is only available to Gmail users is a sort of combination between Gmail Voice Chat (the call phone button is actually placed in the chat area) and Google Voice, the application that actually allows users to dial a number. At least for this year, calling landline and mobile in the US and Canada will be free as Google has mentioned. We’ve yet to find out whether the service will remain free after this year ends. The rates for other countries aren’t high either and can seriously compete with what Skype is currently offering., The fees for calling various countries such as France, Germany, China, Japan or the UK start at two cents per minute.
While most Gmail users have already discovered the feature, some users still don’t see it on their web mail. If you’re not sure where to look for the feature, the photo presented in this article should make it more clear. You simply have to click on the call phone button and the dialing pad will appear. On the dialing pad you may dial any number to make a voice call. You’ll obviously need a microphone and headphones or speakers to do that.
Google doesn’t seem to be interested in competing with Skype or else the company may have come up with a more advanced service. Rather the search engine giant could simply look for ways to expand its services. Up until now Google has offered search, email, a web browser, social networking site (though not extremely popular), revamped image search and much more. The only thing missing from all this, really, would have been some phone calling functionality which Gmail users can now take advantage of. Good job Google, keep the new stuff coming.
I used it on the first day, but since then it is no longer available. Is it pulled?
Nope. it should still be working. What do you mean by ‘it’s no longer available’?