Google Launches Click-to-call

Google have been working on adding click-to-call functionality to augment their lead in the online advertising market having previously made announcements to allow Google Talk to interoperate with Skype. Yesterday they made the feature public, making it easy for a potential customer to click on an advertisers number and call them.

The interesting part of this is that the call will be free for both the customer and the advertiser, obviously Google have decided that paying for the calls will incenticize customers to call and advertisers to keep advertising.

It works almost like Jajah. The customer clicks on the telephone number and Google calls your telephone number before calling the business and connecting you. Currently the service is available to customers and businesses only within the United States, but I can see Google rolling this out internationally if it works for them.

From the announcement it’s not obvious how Skype fits into this, but my guess is that once they get around to integrating Skype with AdWords you should be able to set it to make calls to businesses via Skype in your Google account preferences. It remains to be seen whether Google will team up with any other softphones.