The search giant is set to compete with other internet telephone companies such as Skype by giving its users the option to make calls from its free web-based email service.

Up until now, Google offered computer-to-computer voice and video chat services. Users are now able to call landline and mobile numbers from inside their Gmail account.

Phone calls made to the US and Canada will be free until the end of the year but, in contrast, calls to the UK, France, China and Germany will cost 2 cents a minute.

This places the service in direct competition with Skype and its offering of free Skype-to-Skype calls to any country in the world.

Users will see the product link appear on the left hand side of the Gmail page within the ‘chat’ window. A ‘call phone’ option will pop up alongside a number pad which allows the user to dial the number of the contact they wish to speak to.

It is thought that this new service will be a more efficient and low-cost communication method for Gmail users.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Email, VoIP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.