Not content with dominating search, email, maps and online video, this week Google announced that, for its American customers at least, it will also be attempting to usurp the telephone. Within days of rolling out the option to call Google contacts’ phones from within its Gmail service, the search giant revealed that more than a million people had already used the service, which it is expecting to be driven in large part by bargain rates for international calls. But for consumers, it’s another step along the road to the idea of one number that can reach you wherever you are, rather than separate ones for mobile, home and work. The move puts Google in direct competition with Skype, whose forthcoming IPO may now be looking somewhat less attractive, but it also marks a new evolution in the connectivity of services; the web browser, on a phone or a computer, is becoming the window via which consumers can view everyone they know. In due course it’s likely, too, that the idea of dialling a n...
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