Google announces the release of a direct competition to Skype‘s web-to-phone service, Google Talk. with free calls to USA and Canada for the rest of 2010. Currently, when a call is made a charge of 10 cents appears next to your call history. My hope is that will be erased at the end of 2010, and I will no long be able to make calls until I have purchased credits to continue to make long distance calls at low rates.
It can be used in both the web browser and client versions of Gmail, and come auto loaded with the phone numbers of your contact list. Because I have it synced to my phone, all my phone contacts were also made available. The true test of it’s value will be in consistency of connection, and how the rates will pan out moving forward. Skype has very competitive rates, but their software requires you install and run an additional program to your browser.
My prediction is that Google will be our dark lords by 4th quarter.