Gmail Calling
Posted by jonathan at 1:46pm EST on 08/25/2010
Google announced a new feature today which includes making phone calls directly from within Gmail.
This is a huge stab against Skype and all of the other VoIP competitors out there.
With this release, Google is offering free calling anywhere within the United States and Canada for the rest of 2010.
What kind of implications can this have on the VoIP community? How about the e-mail community?
First, the VoIP community just took on a huge new competitor, with a lot of resources, and millions of users. It’s difficult to compete in a space when Google hops into bed with your industry. Google hadn’t really tapped too far into the VoIP industry yet, even with GTalk, as GTalk hasn’t received wide-spread consumption yet.
Google definitely wants to progress more into the VoIP space and this is their first attempt at it – and I think they will be extremely successful. But success will only come when it’s a full desktop download, not just within Gmail.
Secondly, how does this effect the e-mail community which drives the Gmail traffic? I think it has a very positive effect on it. Gmail just became much more useful.
Beyond the basic added features of Gmail Labs – which I use the Calendar widget religiously because it’s so easy to create calendar events – Gmail now has another hard element which is very functional [and people will use it].
A huge congrats goes out to the Gmail team behind this release, it’s a great new feature.
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Josefina Agüello
Aug 26th, 2010
Wow, I can’t wait to try this out. I use Skype now to make outgoing calls, but that costs a small amount, and even more for incoming calls. That they can do this for free is surprising, but it is Google.
In larger implications, using a computer to make business calls and then recording them and adding them to your CRM seems like a great way to stay on top of all information related to a contact.
Josefina Argüello – Posicionamiento en Google
Seguro de Vida
Sep 26th, 2011
G’Day! Ginside,
I know what you mean, so you know that new service that gmail has that allows you to call a phone in the us and canada for free? so i know that its free on gmail, but will it also be free for the phone that gmail calls? like other than the amount of money it would usually costs, does it charge an extra fee just bc the other person is calling from gmail? thanks
Wishes