Google Officially Brings Voice To Gmail

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."

To remove the annoying phone icon

[Anonymous Coward]

To remove the annoying phone icon: settings>>chat>>google voice (disable outbound voice calling)

encrytion issues

[lazycam]

Last time I checked Google voice services did not support encryption. Unless they are talking about implementing security measures similar to Skype, I am not interested.

Re:encrytion issues

[tukang]

Skype doesn't give you a free phone number and also doesn't allow you to make/recieve calls to landlines for free. Google Voice + Google Call can essentially replace a landline (except for 911) and if they bring this to android you could technically get a phone with only a data plan. I just tried it and it works nicely on linux. They should update the google voice extension so you can receive & make calls w/o needing to have gmail open but I'm sure that will come later. The call quality wasn't always great but overall it's a great addition that unlike buzz & wave is immediately useful to me.

related, nearly a dupe

[jDeepbeep]

Also from today on /. Google testing voice calling in GMail [slashdot.org]

Re:encrytion issues

[tukang]

Might be because skype is p2p based and there is law that bans p2p in certain areas of government because people were unintentionally sharing gov't files. Why your Senator can't Skype [cnn.com]

Re:I don't get it -- what's in it for Google?

[xannik]

I think this could help propel their social networking adoption rates as you will need to have a gmail account to sign up. I love the convenience of Buzz as I am a current gmail user, but Facebook obviously has the lion's share of the social networking market. If Google can get more people signed up to Buzz they can deliver more targeted advertisements as they learn more about the habits of their users through social networking. This further increases the value of AdSense and AdMob.

Also, they serve up ads at the top of gmail itself, not to mention I'm sure they could mine data of users' phone calls. They have great voice-to-text technology for Android that I am sure they could re-purpose for analytical uses. :-)

Re:YAY

[Anonymous Coward]

You can download google voice app for Android from the Android Market. It integrates nicely with the dialer, letting you specify rules for when the call should be routed via Google Voice. On my phone I have it configured to dial all international numbers through GV.

Re:encrytion issues

[KahabutDieDrake]

Actually, it's KNOWN there are back doors. Well, at least one. I can't remember which government gave it away, I think it was probably Germany. In any case, it's known that there is a back door, which at the very least government agencies of the alphabet soup kind have access.