Make multiple calls in Gmail
Over the years, we've expanded Gmail's communication abilities by allowing you to make voice and video calls to other computers and more recently call phones. Until now, though, you were limited to making one call at a time.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has been assembling this piece by piece since 2008: first voice and video chat inside Gmail, then the ability to place calls to real phone numbers in August 2010 — which drew a million calls in its first 24 hours — then a commitment to keep calling free through 2011. A call-recording experiment followed in late 2010.
Until now each Gmail user was capped at one live call at a time, which kept the feature in the role of an occasional convenience. Removing that cap turns the same browser tab into something structurally closer to a multi-line phone, and it lands on a service Google had already been positioning as a communications hub rather than just an inbox.
First-order effects
- Gmail users who had been hanging up one call to place another can now run several at once — handling a personal and a work line, or conferencing two parties together manually, without leaving the tab.
Second-order effects
- With free US calling extended through 2011, removing the concurrency cap makes it plausible for a freelancer or small operation to treat Gmail as their actual phone system, shifting call volume away from carrier minutes and onto Google's termination costs.
Third-order effects
- The trajectory since the 2008 voice-and-video launch points toward webmail clients collapsing the boundary between email and telephony — a direct answer to the long-running critique that web-based email had seen only token improvement while instant messaging and social networks raced ahead.
The trend: Browser-based email clients are absorbing real-time voice capability feature by feature, with Google using free PSTN calling to pull Gmail toward becoming a full communications platform.