Google pilots Click to Call service

By Steve Malone

Posted on 25 Nov 2005 at 10:33

In another of the seemingly endless flow of new initiatives, Google is quietly launching its click-to-call service. Imaginatively called 'Google Click to Call', it may go some way to explaining why the search engine was so keen to buy up bandwidth earlier this year.

Click to Call is a service that allows advertisers - usually small local businesses to advertise online without actually having a web site to click through to.

Thus, some AdWords have started to appear with a telephone icon alongside. By clicking on the icon a box appears in which you type your number and click on 'dial for free'. Google will then dial the advertiser and when you pick up your phone, you can hear the phone ringing at the other end. There are no call charges for landlines although Google says it may charge for calls to mobiles.

Those who worry that they are giving enough information to Google already may be concerned about handing over their phone number. Google says that the number is not passed to the merchant but is merely required to help complete the call. However, the number is stored as an encrypted cookie for up to four months to allow the service to use the number for subsequent requests.

The launch of Google Click to Connect starts to draw together a few of the other initiatives that the company has launched over the past few months. It brings together the VoIP service launched with Google Talk. It also makes a perfect fit for Google Base that is aimed at small-scale resellers who may not have a merchant site of their own. It will also annoy eBay that is presumably working on exactly the same level of integration when it bought the Skype VoIP service a couple of months ago.

Google is by no means the first to provide a click to call service. A similar initiative was launched by Miva (formerly eSpotting) pioneered its own Pay Per Call service several months ago. Meanwhile arch rival Yahoo! has been trialling its own version of Pay Per Call in the UK since August through the Kelkoo online shopping portal. It is also reported to be testing a similar service in the US with Ingenio.