Google plugs free PC-to-phone calling into e-mail

August 25, 2010
GMail logo

(AP) -- Google is adding a new e-mail feature that may persuade more people to cut the cords on their landline phones.

The service unveiled Wednesday enables U.S. users of 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, , which charges 1.2 cents to 2.1 cents per minute for U.S. calls.

Google hopes to make 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.

©2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Yevgen
Aug 26, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
Just keep in mind, it is still in beta.
After I installed the firefox addon needed to do the gmail phone calling, it killed all my other addons and even the tools-->add-ons manager does not come up anymore.
I am waiting to hear from google help support about
the solution yet. Anybody had the same problem?
Yevgen
Aug 26, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
This might have been just a coincidence that I noticed problem after installing "call phone" addon. I found an article here:
http://forums.moz...=1976243
blaming other change in firefox, related to personas.

Indeed when I uninstalled personas add-on by starting firefox in safe mode with add-ons disabled:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode"
...the problem disappeared.

Regards,
Yevgen
Rank 4.8 /5 (13 votes)
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