Call phone from Gmail

Recently, Google added a cool feature to Gmail. Now you can make international phone calls, i.e. you can call fix and mobile numbers too. In the US and Canada it’s FREE, and you can make international calls for a very low price. For instance, I can call Hungary from Canada for 0.02 CAD. Pas cher ! :) More info here. International calling rates here.

How to have it? First, you must enable it in Gmail in Settings -> Chat. Here next to Call Phones choose “Enable”. Then, in the bottom left corner a new link should appear that says “Call phone”. When you click on it, you will be asked to install a plugin. I tried it under Ubuntu and Windows, works fine.

I also had 0.10 CAD on my account which gave me 5 minutes of talk. If you like the feature, you can add credit to your account. Actually, I use it together with Skype. If somebody is not online, I call him on his fix/mobile number and ask him to start Skype. If he’s OK, we can continue the conversation on Skype for free.¹

¹Note that the masculine gender has been used for simplicity only ;)