Make Free Phone Calls directly from your Gmail account.

Google has finally launched a new feature that lets you enable Google Voice directly from your Gmail account. You can now place calls to landline and mobile phones from within Gmail. To use this new service all you need to do is to install the free google voice and video chat plugin to your gmail account.
Once the plugin is installed a new "Call Phone" icon will appear on the google instant messenger and when you click on it a number pad will appear and you can enter and phone number you want to call. If you have a google voice number, it will appear as your caller ID and you can receive your inbound calls directly from gmail too.
Calls to landline and mobile phones in the USA and Canada is completely FREE till the end of 2010 and calls to other countries are billed at Google Voice low rates. This i believe will definitelly increase the use of Google Voice because it greatly simplifies its use as users does not have do the complicated setting up of Google Voice + Gizmo + IPKall.
Google has shown the interest to challenge Skype as the leader in the voip business and they sure must believe this will help them bridge the gap between Google Voice and Skype. It does not matter what Google's motive is as long as we can enjoy those free USA and Canada calls and low rates on international call its all fine. Enjoy!