Use Gmail to call other phones

“Let me call you using Gmail” – the next time you hear that from your friend, don’t throw a blank stare as though you were technologically ignorant. After all, it has been confirmed that Google allows voice calls to another phone via Gmail – now how about that? It will be free if you decide to place calls to the US and Canada until January 2011 rolls around, while phone calls to other countries will be billed at “very low rates“, although the word low is relative here. For those who love chatting up family and friends in the U.K., France, Germany, China, India, Mexico and Japan among others, you can do so for as little as $0.02 per minute. You dial a number in a similar manner to that of a normal phone, clicking “Call phone” at the top of your chat list beforehand. Only US-based Gmail users will be able to experience this over the next few days, where you will have to install the voice and video plug-in to get started. For a non US-based user, the folks at Google are working on a rollout solution in due time so stay patient!