In some good news for those who love to chat in India, search engine giant Google has launched a free SMS-chat service for its Indian Gmail and paid Google App customers. The new service will allow the users to send a text message or SMS to mobile phones with the help of Gmail chat, and has been launched on October 10, 2012.
Initially, the search engine will provide free SMS credit for 50 messages. Credit will be increased by five points every time someone responds to the text message, up to a credit limit worth 50 SMS per day.
The new service will be available in India with eight cellular operators, including Vodafone, Reliance, MTS, Tata , Idea and Aircel. To send an SMS the user has to either add a phone number to the contact list, enter the contact’s name in the search box or invite friends to chat and select ‘Send SMS’ from the box of options to the right of the contact’s name. If there is a chat window already open, messages can be sent from there by selecting ‘send SMS’.
For the mobile phone user to whom the Google message is sent, replies will be charged as per their service provider rates. If the Google user has exhausted their 50 SMS credit for the day without replies, credit will be added by Google after 24 hours; thus users will not get locked out of the system.
