Google just started offering a free "click-to-connect" service that allows you to phone anyone with a listed phone number in Google Local. I think this is a pretty big deal :
[Note: The address Google shows for us is old, here are the right addresses for EchoDitto in DC and NYC. And, yes, that's my cell phone number in there.]
It's fairly simple: after you find the person/business you wish to contact, just click their phone number, type in your own (US?) phone number, and a second later, you receive a call that connects you with the person/business you want to talk to. It's free. (Unless you're on a cell phone. Then your inbound airtime minutes charges apply.)
Amazon already has this feature if you need to contact customer support, but this is a first major free domestic long-distance phone service, as far as I can tell.
Some musings:
(1) Is Google entering the VoIP market and planning to compete against Skype in some way? Now that would be interesting.
(2) I've had a version of this embedded into my email messages for a while — there's a "click to call me" button in my signature line. Several people each week click on it to call me. (I can tell from the caller ID). I'll admit that at first I used it for fun, but then people actually began to reach me this way. Which leads me to believe, in some non-linear way, that this might be actually a useful tool for Google users.
(3) God, everyone hates telemarketing calls. Google says they have technology to prevent this, but who knows? Stop the insanity!
Someone will undoubtedly come up, within the next two weeks, with a neat Web 2.0 widget that makes this tool even more useful. Two minutes after that, someone else will find a way to exploit the tool for commercial gain.
(4) Political campaigns should figure out a way to use this technology, pronto. Not just for passive stuff ("click this to call someone on our campaign staff"), but for active voter outreach types of things. Imagine if you hooked this service up with a phonebook of the folks in your neighborhood, and then got you campaign volunteers to start making get-out-the-vote phone calls...or fundraising calls...or whatever. I remember on the Dean campaign that our long distance bills were out of control, this (or something similar) could neatly eliminate that problem.
