Okay Geek Farm
Gmail can now call phone numbers and make cake
Brandon Davenport
Just when you thought Gmail was the internet, it has now become your phone. Gmail has become so packed full of (surprisingly) useful features, that the need to leave your inbox has become an afterthought. For some, it’s overwhelming and understandably confusing, but for the geeks — this is pure, concentrated #win.
Obviously, Google is heading straight towards the throat of Skype, and I imagine there is quite an uproar at Skype HQ today. Google announced availability in the U.S. and Canada, and they mentioned it will be free “at least through the end of the year,” with other calls being charged at “very low rates”.
How do you make a call? Simple, you’ll need to download Google’s voice and video plugin and get it up and running. Once that’s complete, you’ll see a “call phone” section in Gmail (pictured above) and after you click it open, you can start pushing buttons, and ringing phones.
The cool part is, you can also receive calls, and if you happen to have a Google Voice phone number, the calls that you make from Gmail will display that number as the outbound caller ID. Pretty slick, and this is one major leap forward for applications inside the browser, and another sign that email is becoming less about the email part, and more about this cool stuff.
PS: The cake was a lie!
