Create a Free Business Phone Line with Google Voice and Gmail Chat

I just wrote an article recently on how to use a software called VoxOx to create a free business phone line, and someone from Google must have read my article. Just recently, Google released a new feature within their Gmail Free E-mail service that allows you to make calls out, as well as receive them on your Google Voice phone number. I predicted that they were working on something like this since they had acquired the Gizmo5 service. It looks like I still have my market awareness and will continue to keep watching for cool things like this to report on. Learn how to set this up after the jump. It isn't really that difficult, but I figured I would let everyone in on this in case you didn't know. It is much easier to setup and obviously integrates much better with Google Voice than the VoxOx program.

First of all, if you haven't already, you have to setup a Google Voice account and also have a Gmail account. Choose a Google Voice number that is local to your area. Once you have done that within your Google Voice account you can setup your phones. You can add your mobile phone, so that you can answer your business calls. After that you will also see that you can add a Gmail Chat account. This is where you add your Gmail account. Once this is setup, you can call phone numbers in the US and Canada for free, and also receive calls to your Gmail Chat account. This works great for those starting a business and want to save on their business phone line until they can really afford a line. The free calling from Google is available until at least the end of 2010. Who knows what will happen after that. My guess is that they will start charging some sort of fee. Hopefully it will be priced similar to the way they charge for their Business Apps services.