Gmail places over 1 million voice calls in first 24 hours

Popular, much? It appears that the new Gmail voice calling feature (dubbed by many Google Voice in Gmail, though that's a misnomer) had a lot of interest on its debut day. According to a Google Twitter post, there were over 1 million Gmail voice calls placed on Wednesday.

The question, really, is if the service can build on that? You can assume many of those calls were due to the novelty and newness of the service ("let's try it out!").

Of course, the word "free" usually has a great influence on how much something is used. Right now, and at least through the end of 2010, calls made through Gmail are free to the U.S. and Canada. International calls are as low as 2 cents a minute.

Nicely, it also integrates with Google Voice; it uses your Google Voice for outbound calls, and you can receive inbound calls as well. Of course, you have to have a Google Voice number for it to work. The only downside is having to install extra software to use it (hey, Google, why not just make that part of Chrome?).