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Google Officially Brings Voice To Gmail

Posted by samzenpus on from the talk-away dept.

siliconbits writes "Google has finally added voice support to its popular Gmail email service which means that users will soon be able to call landlines and mobiles worldwide for free or for extremely low prices. The announcement was made at a press conference in San Francisco in front of a few selected press members."

6 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. YAY by bobstreo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    and it works in Linux with just a plugin and a browser restart

    Now where's the android client?

  2. Re:just another trip to the data mine for google by turbotroll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    no thank you.

    I have been always wondering, why is the public (over)concerned about Google mining and their users' data, but not Yahoo, Skype, Microsoft et al?

  3. Re:encrytion issues by bcmm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Skype uses a closed, secret protocol. It may or may not be properly encrypted. There may or may not be intentional backdoors.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  4. Re:encrytion issues by Recovery1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Unfortunately the Google Voice part only works in the United States. You can still make phone calls out with it to Canada but no incoming calls or any of the features in Google Voice. I has a sad :(

  5. Re:Next feature? by Recovery1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually that would be a very smart idea. There is still a lot of people out there who have to keep a landline for faxing. While there is services on the internet that already do faxing, you either have to charge a fee for it or put up with advertisements. Plus there is no inbound faxing on them.

    It would be nice to use that Google Voice (which as of writing this is still sadly not available here in Canada) to receive faxes through your phone number and have them pop up as an email with an attachment or something. They already have the infrastructure in place with Google Voice, adding a fax service to it I don't think would be too far of a stretch.

  6. Re:encrytion issues by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now you need to ask yourself WHY they're giving you these things for free (and if they're going to stay free). It's not free for them.

    I'd rather pay Skype the $4 a month, thanks. Not to mention Google Voice isn't even available.