Tech giant Google Inc says that Gmail users will now be able to call telephones directly from their email.
Google already provides computer-to-computer voice and video chat services. But the company said that it is for the first time that they will be allowing calls to home phones and mobile phones directly from Gmail.Google promised free calls to US and Canadian phones from Gmail for the rest of this year and said it would charge low rates for calls made to other countries.For example it said calls to Britain, France, Germany, China and Japan would be as low as two cents per minute.
Gmail user Manish Singh says that he is waiting for that day when Google will extend this service for their Indian subscribers.
Analysts said the service would likely be a bigger competitive threat to services like Skype`s than to traditional phone companies, which have already been cutting their call prices in recent years in response to stiff competition.
"This is a risk to Skype. It`s a competitor with a pretty good brand name," said Hudson Square analyst Todd Rethemeier.
Like Skype, Rethemeier said the Google service will likely be much more popular among US consumers making international calls, than among people calling friends inside the country.
"Calling is so cheap already that I don`t think it will attract a huge amount of domestic calling. It could take some of the international market," he said.
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