“Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers,” says Google software engineer Robin Schriebman. “But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?’”

Over 1,000,000 calls placed from Gmail in just 24 hours! Thanks to everyone using this new feature http://bit.ly/aRgNtc

Google tested the feature internally before releasing it to the public (in the U.S. so far). When users with Google Voice numbers call people, that number will display as the caller ID.

Along with the launch, the company showed off some phone booths it will be setting up in universities and airports. Danny Sullivan got to peek inside one:

The phone booths should go a long way in showing off this feature and familiarizing people with Google Voice in general, which seems to be the company’s real goal.

Clearly there is an interest in making phone calls from Gmail, as the numbers from the first day indicate.

“Where is that presentation? Was it attached to an email? Or in Google Docs? If you’re not sure, you may end up searching several places with the same query in order to find it. With the new ‘Apps Search’ lab, we just made that all a bit simpler,” writes Google software engineer Bram Moolenaar.

“You may notice that mail results show up just as fast as before while non-mail results may take a tiny bit longer. That way, if you’re just looking for an email, having this lab enabled won’t slow you down,” adds Moolenaar.

The feature also comes with “did you mean?” suggestions.

Given that the feature is a Gmail Labs experiment, it is subject to bugs, so keep this in mind if you turn it on. The feature can be turned on by going to Gmail settings, and clicking the “labs” tab. From there find “Apps Search”.

Now, according to Google Operating System, Google is testing a feature that will let users log in to multiple Google accounts in the same web browser. Personally, I have at least four different Gmail accounts open at all times, and this feature is very high on my wish list.

Google services that are currently being tested include Gmail, Reader, Sites, Calendar, Code and Docs. There is one limitation: if you turn on multiple sign-in, you cannot access Gmail in offline mode.

Multiple sign-in will let you open Gmail in multiple tabs, log in using different accounts and read the messages from all your accounts without opening another browser. Right now, you have to log out before logging in to a different account.

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A noteworthy point here is that Google’s skipped past the beta/lab stage, offering the new option to lots of ordinary Gmail users.  Another important fact is that it’s user-friendly – the sort of thing even people who don’t read WebProNews and official Google blogs might discover for themselves.

Michael Davidson, a software engineer, explained on the Gmail Blog, though, “[W]e’re launching a feature that allows you to drag images from your computer into a message.  You don’t have to have the insert image lab enabled for it to work.  Just drag the image in, resize it if you want, and send.”

Then Davidson mentioned the one catch, which is significant: “Currently, this feature only works in Google Chrome, but will be coming soon to other browsers.”

It’s your call whether Google is trying to reward Chrome users by giving them early access to some cool stuff, or if this is just a new way of testing things out on a small subset of the population.  Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how long “soon” turns out to be.

In the post, Google addresses some of the privacy concerns people have been having, and improvements they’re making based on user feedback.

Google has uploaded the entire Google Buzz launch event. If you are interested in seeing the new product unveiled, you can watch it below:

Article starts: Google held a press event to announce the most “buzzed” topic of the week - Google Buzz. This is Google’s new product, which is being compared to social networks like Twitter and Facebook. It is integrated with Gmail and other Google products, and appears to be one of the missing links in tying Google together as a social network, a concept we’ve discussed repatedly.

Editor’s Note: The bulk of this article was written before the announcement was made and has been adjusted to reflect the announcement itself, after live blogging the press event.

Google says Buzz has five key elements:

1. Auto Following
2. Rich, Fast Sharing experience…
3. Support for public and private sharing….
4. In-box integration
5. Just the good stuff…

Watch the video below to get a general idea of what Buzz does.

Buzz will show a thumbnail of a YouTube video and make it easy to play in line. With photos, they will show thumbnails, but Google built a custom photo viewer, which lets you flip through pictures and see them “big and fast”. If you share links, it will automatically fetch headlines and photos from the post (similar to Facebook). You can “like” and “unlike” stuff, and expand comments. It works with keyword shortcuts from Gmail.

Public/Private sharing – The post box will let you post updates publicly or privately. If it’s public, it will go to your Google profile, and is indexed by Google’s real-time search. You can share privately, and it will let you send to groups and custom groups.

In your in-box, you will see buzz notifications that contain real-time comments. It sits in the same in-box as your regular email, but you can move between your regular in-box and your Buzz stuff. It integrates it right into Gmail.You can also use “@” for replies like with Twitter.

While Google Buzz is presented as a Gmail feature, it goes well beyond Gmail. For one, all public updates you post will be posted to your Google profile page, (which is searchable). In addition, Google launched three new mobile products for Buzz:

1. The ability to use Buzz from www.Google.com on iPhone/Android
2. Brand new app at buzz.google.com
3.  Maps Update for Nokia Symbian/ Android.

Mobile could be one of the biggest keys to the success of this product. Google says Google.com is the world’s most popular mobile home page, and Buzz can be accessed from there on iPhone and Android devices. Android’s popularity is growing quickly too.

Buzz will find your location (if you let it) and snap your updates to that location. With the Google Maps feature, you can see what people are saying based on location. You can even use voice recognition to post buzz updates by voice.

Google has decided that instead of showing completely irrelevant ads in such cases, it will just dig back into another conversation from your Gmail usage, and show you ads related to that. This is illustrated in the clip below.

“Let’s say you’re looking at a confirmation email from a hotel in Chicago. Next to your email, you might see ads about flights to Chicago,” explains Gmail Product Manager Steve Crossan. “But sometimes, there aren’t any good ads to match to a particular message. From now on, you’ll sometimes see ads matched to another recent email instead. For example, let’s say you’re looking at a message from a friend wishing you a happy birthday. If there aren’t any good ads for birthdays, you might see the Chicago flight ads related to your last email instead.”

Google is careful to point out that it doesn’t store any extra information to show these ads. It just picks a different recent email to match. It’s all automated, and no humans are involved in picking the ads. The process is compared to Gmail’s spellchecker. Google also notes that no email or personal information is shared with advertisers.

The change will be rolling out over the next several days, so if you are still seeing ads completely irrelevant to any conversation you’ve had, you may not have the new system implemented yet.