Internet-based phone service is nothing new. Skype, which lets Americans talk to each other for free and charges a couple of pennies per minute for long distance, began seven years ago. But Wednesday, Google has begun rolling out Internet phone service built into the interface of its Gmail service.
Google promotes it as a fallback feature for Gmail’s video chat system, in case the other party isn’t sitting in front of a computer waiting to have a video chat with you. But it’s not just for your video chat partners, if you even have any. It’s for anytime a phone call is the best way to communicate with someone else. Some people who would never accept a video chat request might take a phone call instead.
Here’s how it works: A new button on Gmail’s interface, Call Phones, launches a small window with a telephone-style keypad. There’s also a box into which you can type people’s names, to see if their phone number is in your Gmail address book. To use the phone feature, you first need to install a plug-in for your browser from Google. It works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google’s own Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari on Macs.
Google will use your computer’s built-in microphone and speakers, or a USB headset, to pick up your voice and to play the other party’s voice. (The headset works better than a computer’s built-in mic, which makes a call sound like its coming from a speakerphone.)
Once you’ve installed the plug-in and configured your computer to use the right audio gear, making the calls is as easy as dialing an old Princess phone. I’m glad Google didn’t clutter the keypad with all sorts of extra buttons and distractions.
The person you’re calling will see on their phone the caller ID 760-705-8888, which Google uses for all outbound calls unless you’re also using its Google Voice service and have a Google Voice number.
Google Voice gives you a Google-assigned number so Google can handle your incoming calls and voicemail. That may be an additional complexity you don’t want. You also need to sign up with Google Voice if you want to receive calls within Gmail. You’l need to give out your Google Voice number to friends and colleagues if you want them to call you through Gmail.
Like Skype, Google’s prices are hard to beat. Calls within the United States and Canada are free. Calls to other countries average around two cents a minute. Google has posted its rates for each country. (77 cents a minute for calls to North Korea.)
Sure, you could reach for your cellphone instead of dialing your browser. But my extensive use of Skype and smartphones has shown that most of the time an Internet phone call has better voice quality. People don’t ask me to repeat myself. There are sometimes annoying delays of up to four seconds between the time someone says something at one end and the time it pops out at the other end. These delays come from the Internet itself, which will make them hard for even Google to fix. And every now and then, Internet calls get dropped just like a cellphone.
What’s in it for you? If you already use Skype and Gmail, you can move to having only one Web page and one address book that combines e-mail, IM-style chat, and phone. It would be even more useful if Google would add a button in Gmail that appears alongside every message: “Call Joe Smith now.” After all, it should be easy for Google, which already scans the text of your inbound messages to deliver better-targeted ads, to fish Joe’s phone number out of his e-mail signature.
