The official google blog announced you can now make calls from Gmail.
If you have Google Voice, then that number will show as where you’re calling from.
Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”
Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.
Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.
Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.
We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant, to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception.
If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions).
We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install thevoice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re not a U.S. based user—or if you’re using Google Apps for your school or business—then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly—so stay tuned!
For more information, visit gmail.com/call.
I tried to call a friend in Baltimore,MD. I could hear her, but she could not hear me.
I usually use Skype to make calls. It seems to work well for me. My family lives far away, so I call them constantly. It’s a lot cheaper than a plane ticket.
Sarah
http://www.hccmis.com
It is not showing any option to call after I made the payment for credit. After lot of search, it says that google voice phone is only working from USA. Google users should be cautioned. Why did gmail voice did not mention it while taking payment instead it merrily took the payment in spite of mentioning my location country.
I do not know how to get back my payment – anybody has any idea?
Surprisingly i m waiting ti see how it is working.
I know very less about it but surprisingly I m waiting, how it is working.