Google’s Click-to-Call is a new feature on Google Maps. It’s great and easy to use.
Just search and locate a business via Google Maps and look for the “Call” button. (It’s in 2 places—on the left sidebar and on the map when you click open the locator pin.) Simply click it and it opens. You insert your telephone number and Google rings your phone and connects your call to the business.
Here’s how it looks:
The beauty of it is two-fold: (1) it’s free—no cost to you or the business. That includes local & long distance. (there is a fee if you use your cell phone) and (2) Google stores the vendor phone number in your caller ID for future dialing. And it WORKS. Google is good. Google is testing the feature and it should survive so long as spammers and telemarketers don’t figure out a way to exploit it.
For more information on click-to-call.
As great as this sounds on the surface… I wonder what’s in it for Google? I can only imagine that they must be compiling data regarding phone numbers, IP addresses, etc.
Why else would they charge if you use a cell phone?
Just a thought…
Interesting to see where it goes. They may be trying to compete with Skype. There is plenty of room for abuse here. We can see business owners using it call their suplliers free of charge or telemarketers writing a program to send their recorded pitch to select business in a geographic area. Like all true pragmatists, the proof is in the pudding.
It will be interesting to see how useful the feature will be.
At least one blogger is claiming that Google alledgedly falsifies the Caller-ID that appears to the receiver of the call (http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000200.html). The poster also has updated the post with a proposed solution, however, I think that once telemarketers start using this service as a way around the “do-not-call” list without getting busted, the service will wither away.
I think you may be right fsbl. It seems too easy for telemarketers to abuse this feature.
I’ve tried it a few times, and if you don’t think about all the bad that could possibly come from it, it’s a great service. Ordering pizza has never been easier!