First Impressions: Making Phone Calls From Gmail

Read review here

Yet another sign of how voice services are racing to zero cost. Google has made it so that using Gmail you can make phone calls at no cost within the US and Canada.

Now, obviously the big issue is that you have no DID (direct inward dial) number assigned to you... hence people can't call you or see you are calling on their caller ID.

The point however is that it won't be long before all that stuff is available just like it is on Skype (although in Canada you still can't get a DID for Skype - thank you CRTC, NOT!).

Anyway, I can definitely see the day where Google offers a 360-degree digital / communications offering. Right now they have their finger in just about every pie... they've got Android, voice services, search engine, office apps that could replace microsoft office, the ability to become an online media provider (YouTube), and on and on and on...

The only thing Google is missing, and it's a huge piece of the puzzle, is the OS... which means they can't play in the in the PC market.. which means they will never be able to offer a true 360-degree offering to consumers.

If Google ever decided to create an OS for the PC, I think it would be the end of Microsoft. But the R&D dollars required for that would be mind boggling. I suppose they could always take an open source OS and build on top of that, which wouldn't be too difficult.

Anyway, it's so strange that as we go through this recession we are in, so much innovation is just waiting to be unleashed and radically change the world.... and I do think Google will lead the way. In three years from now I think we'll be talking about how Microsoft fell to Apple and then Apple fell to Google.

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