Google on Wednesday announced it would compete directly with Skype, the pioneer in internet telephony, as it unveiled a feature that will enable its Gmail users to call landlines and mobile phones from their e-mail inbox.

Last year Skype was the top carrier of international voice calls, reporting that in the year to June 30th, Skype’s registered users rose from 397m to 560m. Gmail has just over 200m users. However, only about 8.1m of Skype’s users pay for the service, and the company relies on these direct payments from these users for most of its revenues. Skype, which is planning a share floatation, generated $406.2m of revenues in the first six months of 2010 but net income was only $13.1m. The eBay auction service sold the service last November

Google said on Wednesday that calls to the US and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at very low rates. Google said it 'worked hard' to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan - - and many more countries - -  for as little as $0.02 per minute.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click 'Call phone' at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

Google said: "We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once 'Call Phones' shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re not a U.S. based user - - or if you’re using Google Apps for your school or business - - then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly—so stay tuned!"

For more information, visit gmail.com/call.