San Francisco, CA – Google is adding a new e-mail feature that may persuade more people to cut the cords on their landline phones.
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The service unveiled Wednesday enables U.S. users of Google Inc.’s free Gmail service to make calls from their personal computers to telephones virtually anywhere in the world.
All calls in the U.S. and Canada will be free through at least the end of the year. That undercuts the most popular PC-to-phone service, Skype, which charges 1.2 cents to 2.1 cents per minute for U.S. calls.
Google hopes to make money by charging 2 cents per minute for most international calls made on its e-mail calling service.
People also will be able to receive calls on their PC if they obtain a phone number from Google or already have one.
Great, as long as you have internet that doesn’t come in over a phone line in the first place…
And if you have a smartphone with WIFI and are in your house or near a hotsp[t, you can continue to make free calls on your smartphone. If you’re not near a wifihotspot, it would go to voice mail and you can retrieve it later. Disruptive technology will put landlines and wireless out of business.
Great to use while on a plane with wifi service
bye bye Skype
do you really think google will let you make domestic calls for free. the other question is will it work better then skype or majic jack?
skype is still way ahead of google much more advaced and can also be used with wifi anywhere
but skype costs money