One million “g-calls” just for starters
“Wave” and “Buzz” may have tanked, but Google’s free phone service was certified golden on its very first day—very good news for Google officials who had begun to feel like the Rodney Dangerfields of the internet world, “they couldn’t get no respect.”
On Wednesday, Google introduced its new feature that enables users to place free or reduced-price telephone calls via Gmail. On Thursday morning, Google officials tweeted that users had placed more than one million calls in the first twenty-four hours of the service’s availability. According to math wizards with time on their hands, the number translates to one in every 3000 American calls on Wednesday. Alternatively, it means that, if your company has 300 employees, at least one person on the payroll tried the new Google service. Or, in the average office building, at least one worker on each floor placed a computer call to someone in North America.
Using the innovative blend of Google Voice and Gmail technologies, users can send and receive calls through their computers. When they link Gmail and Voice, users arrange to have their inboxes ring when people call their Google voice numbers. The Google Voice number also appears on call recipients’ incoming call screens. At least for the remainder of this year, G-phone calls will be free throughout the United States and Canada. Calls from the United States to France and the United Kingdom will cost just 2¢ per minute. Google officials hope that international calls will generate sufficient revenue that they can keep North American calls free.
Google announced that it does have plans to roll out the service across Europe and Asia, but officials declined to give specifics. They said they also have plans to introduce a business version of G-phone service, but they said they have not yet perfected the technology and refused to set a target date for its debut. Google does not plan to make the service available on mobile devices; industry insiders speculate, however, that designers and engineers are working on an Android application that will adapt the service to hand-helds.
