Charitable Gift Giving

As much flak as Google’s been getting lately for their various missteps as a behemoth corporation, here’s something really nice they’ll be doing at least through the end of 2011.

For any troops overseas with a .mil email address, Google is letting them call back home to the United States for free, as long as the call is through Gmail.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/free-calls-home-from-gmail-for-all-us.html

All the service member has to do is add their valid .mil account to their Google Account, click the verification link sent to their .mil address, and they can call home from within Gmail (they’ll have to install the voice and video chat plugin).

If you’ve never used Gmail to make voice calls before, it’s pretty easy. You just click “call phone”, and then listen to calls with your computer speaker and talk into your computer microphone. If you purchase a headset with built-in microphone, it’s just as good (actually better) than speaking on a cell phone.

Hats off to Google for doing a great deed and help our men and women in uniform who have sacrificed so much to defend our freedom and our way of life keep in touch with their loved ones back home. Hopefully they can continue it past the end of 2011.