One million Gmail voice calls in first 24 hours

At first glance, it would seem that Google has a smash hit on its hands. According to a tweet from @Google, the new Google Voice service which allows you to make calls from inside Gmail has already been used over 1 million times during the first 24 hours.

That’s an impressive start, even by Google’s high standards, and confirms the suspicion that Skype executives must be wringing their hands nervously and praying that this is just a passing fad and everyone will come back to the familiarity of Skype.

Internet news blog Mashable reports that Gmail had over 176 million users at the end of December 2009, so the potential market for a large uptake is massive.

The deal has been sweetened by making all calls to America and Canada free for the rest of 2010, which has clearly worked as an incentive to get people to try it.

Users outside of North America will have to wait a little while longer for full implementation. Currently, the rest of the world can try out the application with the pre-loaded US$0.10, but are unable to able to load credit onto the service to take advantage of the cheap rates which Google is offering.