finally!!!!!!

Skype's good.

It should be Google Voice Search...

Skype is good. But Skype is eBay's. Another hot company that Google missed.

yes, google is missing this boat for sure

http://blogoscoped.com/forum/39100.html

When I saw this.. I thought of the word 'call' in another sense.. Maybe it's some sort of RPC interface?

I hope it is Google talks answer to skype. Would be great to ring landlines. If Google do release this, do you think they will make it free?(they seem to with everything else)

<<do you think they will make it free?>>
what?
why not?
its Google!!

and if not, they must have a free version! (like Google Earth)
besides..theyre not MS!:P

Sorry I don't mean the software, that will obviously be free. Do you think they will let us call landlines for free?

dpneal: If they'll do that, that would mean serious trouble for a LOT of TELCO companies. It'll better that I sell those stocks now...

I just checked the HTTP headers for this URL...

Server Response: http://www.google.com/call
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Type: text/xml
Server: callhost
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:53:15 GMT
Connection: Close

Look like another new server being used by Google called "callhost".

Hmmm. It doesn't really give much more away though, does it?

I hope that googles VoIP will respect the existing standards or create new ones. Because they have a jabber based IM I think this isn't to unrealistic.

I wouldn't use skype because there are a lot of unknown elements with this piece of software and it's very insecure. I can't believe that there are companys out there who use it for business.

Stephan: Skype is realy insecure, there are several studies about it.

But... I do know companies that are using it. I know a companie that is using it to phone between there international branches. OpenBC.com is integrating it in its website as a mean to interconnect the networked users of that site.

I even know a banking corporation that is integrating skype in its voice switching infrastructure to enable visitors of its website to make direct calls. I think that is maybe not so insecure because that infrastructure could be in a kind of DMZ.

I noticed that http://www.google.com/call now gives a 404 message. I don't know if google was just teasing or if to many people were trying to guess what the parameters are.

Interesting.. the HTTP server header is still set to "callhost", even though it 404s.

<<Do you think they will let us call landlines for free?>>

im guessing- yes.. or REALLY cheap..
i mean they do want to compete Skype.. isnt it? and Skype is pretty cheap i think..

who knows, maybe theyre prices will be smethings like: 2 cents a minute, 5 cents a minutes.. but lets wait for it to launce.. :P

Just and update on google.com/call . It seems now that the site is back up and running. Unlike before, any params passed now display the generic xml unlike a week ago when you would get 404 after 404. A quick look at the http header info reveals that now the site is hosted on a server called ctcserver (ClickToCall??)

might be.. :)
nice find!

thanks :D

Garett/ ZDNet covers you Nate:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/index.php?p=237

I guess Google must be on weekly cycle, because as of today, google.com/call is returning a 404 again. Going to google.com/call still brings you to the ctcserver, it just displays the generic google 404 page. We'll see in a week what they've change :-)

I stand corrected a day later; google.com/call is back online giving the same generic xml message. Same server and same results as before. :-(o-well

Noticed today that google.com/call has added a field to the pretty bland xml file

<sugg_num data="" />

Not quite sure what this field might be for, but I'm going to do some digging :)-

good luck :)

What could it mean... Suggestion Number?

inferno, don't know. That's what my initial thought was but I'm not sure how that fits into the whole click-to-call sceme. I'm still muling this over. So far all my idea's seem pretty unrealistic :(