Google said today users of its Gmail service will now be able to call telephones directly from their email, putting it in direct competition with web-calling service Skype and companies such as AT&T.
While Google had already offered computer-to-computer voice and video chat services, starting today it said it will allow calls to home phones and mobile phones directly from Gmail for the first time.
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.
It said calls to Britain, France, Germany, China and Japan would be as low as 2 cents per minute.
Skype, owned by private equity firms and eBay, has long allowed consumers to make phone calls from computers, as well as computer-to-computer voice and video calls. Skype said earlier this month it aims to raise as much as $100 million in a public share offering.
Reuters