| | |  Technology News 
Google 'Call Phone' Feature in Gmail Lets You Make Calls Direct From Your Email
 Daily Mail UK
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August 28, 2010
| | Users of Gmail in the US will now be able to make phone calls from their mail account for free for the rest of the year. | |
U.S. users of Google’s Gmail service will now be able to make calls to phones directly from their email inbox.
The new feature will enable U.S. users to make calls from microphone-equipped computers to phones virtually anywhere in the world.
All calls in the U.S. and Canada will be free until at least the end of the year, a move which undercuts the most popular PC-to-phone service, Skype, which charges up to to 2.1 cents per minute for U.S. calls.
Google says it plans to roll out the service elsewhere in the world, including the UK, in the future.
Skype, Google and many other services have been offering free computer-to-computer calling for years.
Google hopes to make money on its PC-to-phone service by charging 2 cents or more per minute for international calls. The international rates will vary widely, sometimes even within the same country.
People also will be able to receive calls on their PC if they obtain a free phone number from Google or already have one.
The phone numbers and technology for the new PC-calling service are being provided by Google Voice, a telecommunications hub that the company has been trying to expand.
Google disclosed last year that it had assigned about 1.4 million phone numbers through its Voice service, which can field calls made to a person's home, mobile or office number.
Besides planting Voice's technology into Gmail, Google also plans to promote the service by setting up red phone boxes at universities and airports scattered across the U.S.
People will be able to make free calls from the booths to U.S. and Canadian numbers and save on international calls.
Google also plans to enable people to transfer their existing home or mobile phone to Voice to widen the service's appeal.
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