When Google first announced Hangouts it wasn't the messaging app that all of us were expecting, but it was still a solid, usable, and useful app. Since then we have heard that the team has been working on adding new features, and today we have seen the first of those features: voice calling.

Google's official Gmail blog calls this "the future of Google Voice." They are allowing you to make voice calls to a phone number via Hangouts in Gmail, Google+, and the Chrome extension. While international rates still cost money (albeit very cheap), calls from any country that has Hangouts to the US or Canada are free. They are also allowing voice calls and video calls in the same Hangout. This works the same way as it did before in GTalk before Hangouts got rid of the feature.

At this point, this feature is only available through Gmail, Google+, and the Hangouts Chrome extension and it will be rolling out to everyone in the coming days. However, there is no word on when the mobile apps will get this feature. Unfortunately, the mobile update will probably be in Google's new favorite method of staged rollouts.

People are still wondering where SMS integration is in Hangouts, and we haven't heard anything on the topic since the days after I/O when someone on the project accidentally said it would be coming. Hopefully we will get a definitive answer soon. As they said, this is the future of Google Voice, and since Google Voice has SMS, I think we can expect it.]]>