Phone (or SMS) Home with Google Chrome

By Geoff Spick (@Goffee71) Jan 26, 2010

Google (news, site) keeps packing in new features to its ever-evolving browser in the battle to convert users. The latest addition helps make Google Voice an essential for the desktop generation.

One Voice, One Device

Skype users will be familiar with the ability to dial any number that you find on a web page through one of the many extensions for your browser. iPhone users delight in being able to dial a number from a website with a single click. Now lucky Chrome/Google Voice users can join in the fun with the latest Google Voice update for its browser, a feature that will no doubt appeal to Enterprise 2.0 users when it is finally ready for primetime.

Google Voice could change the way you phone

Google's Voice of Reason

Google Voice can also store your voice messages and send them to your device or convert them to text messages. Its VoIP technology is similar to that of Skype (Google purchased Gizmo5 late last year for its SIPphone technology), and with conferencing calling, caller ID and so on, it could be big when it finally emerges into the public gaze.

Only a Beta Name Away

Unfortunately, Google Voice is still in limited beta, available by invite only. When that changes you can imagine a fair scrum of sign-ups as people get used to the idea that phone and desktop are becoming one device, even if physically separate.

Give it a few years and a Google phone number will link your home, mobile and office numbers together, contacting you in the most appropriate way.