Address
:
[go:
up one dir
,
main page
]
Include Form
Remove Scripts
Session Cookies
Official Gmail Blog
News, tips and tricks from Google's Gmail team and friends.
Call phones from Gmail
August 25, 2010
Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer
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 the
voice and video plug-in
if you haven’t already). 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
.
Update (8/26)
: This has now been rolled out to everyone in the U.S. If you don't see the feature yet, try logging out of Gmail and signing back in.
Labels
buzz
calendar
Gmail Blog
Google Apps Blog
Google Calendar
googlenew
Inbox
Inbox by Gmail
labs
mobile
Offline
reader
tasks
tip
Archive
2016
Sep
Aug
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Aug
Jul
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Feed
Google
on
Follow @gmail
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forum
.
Get posts via email
Email:
Powered by
Google Groups
Useful Links
About Gmail
Gmail for Mobile
Gmail for Work