UC
After months of rumors and expectations, Google finally launched a voice calling service featuring a simple browser plug-in based dialer embedded into its Gmail messaging application. To attract users, Google is offering free calls within North America, and low long distance rates to the rest of the world.
I’ve had a chance to make a few calls using this service and I’m quite pleased with the result. Call quality is very good thanks to a broadband audio codec. But the user interface leaves something to be desired, especially compared to Skype, who Google appears to be aiming with this effort.
Maintaining a call means leaving a browser window open, and more than once I’ve accidentally disconnected from an in-progress call due to using the browser window to search for something while on a call. And at this point there’s little integration between Google calling within Gmail and Google Voice, its unified messaging solution. For instance, there’s no softphone capability from the Google Voice home page, nor any ability to take advantage of innovative Google Voice features such as the ability to transfer calls between phones for outbound calls (you can, however, have in-bound calls ring your Gmail softphone).
Enterprise managers beware: If you allow access to Gmail, and you allow your users to download and install their own plug-ins, you probably already have Google voice calls going across your network. You are probably also going to face questions around the opportunity to leverage Google calling to reduce long distance charges, or even to replace enterprise-provided voice services.
Now is the time to evaluate both the concerns around Google’s new calling feature in terms of bandwidth, security, and privacy as well as the opportunities to leverage Google Voice (and other similar services) to reduce toll charges.
