Google is always up to something. I guess that’s why the company keeps growing and becoming more popular, despite some serious competition from other old Internet companies. So far, most of the news were about recent acquisitions of Google who isn’t building a team of experts, but rather a whole army of them. Google has bough so many companies that it’s hard to even keep track what type of expertise from which company is going into which of Google’s products. The latest thing that Google came up with is a new service for Gmail. Gmail users will soon be able to communicate through telephone calls.
Ever since 2005 Gmail users could talk through Google Talk, by using a microphone and speakers. Still, there was no service that would allow them to call a landline or cellphone. Well, now it looks like they can, through Google’s Voice App. To make a call to any number users will simply have to click a ‘Call Phone’ feature in the Chat tab of Gmail. The user may then dial the number and talk to anyone, assuming the necessary equipment (headphones, microphone) is present. What’s best about this new feature is that it’s free. Google has announced that calls to US and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year. Calls to other countries are billed however. The rates start at two cents per minute, and almost identical to what Skype, which can now be considered a rival service, is offering.
Some users may already find the feature in their Gmail whereas others won’t. Like many other added features this too will show up over the next few days, as Google mentioned. Once it shows up, users will also have to download Google’s voice and video-plug in which is apparently only available in the US. When I first came across this info the first thing I thought was 
‘this actually makes sense’. Google if currently offering all types of Internet services, search, video (YouTube), images, docs. To make the experience even better for users, Google even released a browser, Chrome. In the near future, Google will even build an operating system aiming to provide an even better Internet experience. Yet up until now Google had nothing to do with two segments of the Internet market, voice calling and social networking (it depends if you want to count Orkul in or not, but I’d rather not). Now Google has voice calls too. The next logical step? You’ve guessed it, challenging Facebook.
Moving back to the new voice service, members will be able to choose computer as another option for a place to receive calls. When a phone call is made towards you, both the computer and the phone will ring. Apparently, to get your computer to ring, according to USAToday, you’ll need a Google Voice phone number which you can get here.
