“Over 1,000,000 calls placed from Gmail in just 24 hours! Thanks to everyone using this new feature,” said Google in a tweet. With this tweet, Google proudly declared future of its newly launched voice calling feature in its mailing service Gmail. More than a million Voice calls were racked up at Gmail by the time the feature was a day old, according to Google spokesman Randall Sarafa.
This latest innovation from Google allows users of its email service Gmail to make phone calls from within their web browser. Now users in U.S. can make free calls to any phone in the country and in Canada. Also, very affordable and cheap pulse rates are offered to call other countries across the globe. Over a million calls in day is certainly a sizeable number. Google unveiled the new feature a couple of days ago, coming as less of a surprise to most people. It had been known that Google was working on such a service and that there were plans to build VoIP functionality into Gmail.
The call feature is dead simple to use, it just requires a plugin to be installed. If you have been using the video and voice chat features in Gmail than the plugin is already installed. But the interesting fact is that, although Google says that the new feature is only available in the US, there are no geographical restrictions. As long as the interface language is set to English (US) you will see the Call phone button. The rates however seem to vary from country to country.
There have been varied reactions from technologists around the globe. Todd Rethemeier, an analyst at Hudson Square, told Reuters that Google’s move presented “a risk to Skype”. He said, however, that it was the attraction of cheap international calls that would be likely to drive people to use the service. “What you have to remember,” says Robin Murdoch, managing director and lead for internet at consultants Accenture, “is that Google makes its money through people going online. The more connected they are, the more things they can do, the more money Google will make.” Google critics have also stated that added phone call capability to Gmail is to encourage folks to use their Google Accounts more, helping to make Google more of a stay-logged-in-all-day hub like Facebook and Google wants people to have every reason to come back to Gmail again and again. Some have even raised questions about privacy issues which is surely not a new thing for Google.
By looking at the overwhelming response and rates offered by Google this new service will surely have traditional telephone companies and Skype quaking in their boots.
