San Francisco — A few weeks ago, shortly after introducing the SMS feature for GMail…Google suddenly pulled the service back due to some glitches. Well, Google has reintroduced the feature back, and this time for good. This Labs feature enables you to quickly send SMS messages via Gchat — perfect for continuing to annoy your contacts with your witty links well after they leave their computer.
Google said the service encountered some problems with its first attempt to allow chatters to send text messages through their instant messaging program. Most users who checked the feature found it would not fully enable. Google assigns phone numbers for GMail SMS messages and provides keywords to block or turn off messages.
Now, Google has re-introduced the SMS text-messaging feature for U.S. users: having sorted out the minor difficulty in the technology it launched — and then pulled — on Oct. 31.
“We encountered a few snags when we first began rolling this out, but starting today you can turn on text messaging for chat,” said Product Director Leo Dirac at Gmail Labs. “We are just trying it out for cell phones in the United States right now, but you can send texts to your friends with U.S. phone numbers from anywhere in the world.”
In order to turn on the SMS feature, Gmail users must first log onto their accounts. Now, “click on Settings within Gmail, and go to the Labs tab at the top of main window. Scroll down until you see “Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat” and to activate, select “Enable” and then click on the “Save” button at the bottom of the Labs page to finish.
“You can start by just typing a phone number into the search box in the chat window on the left, then select ‘Send SMS,’” Dirac said. “You can also select the contact you want to SMS first and then add their phone number.” Gmail will memorize the cell-phone number, “so next time you can just type their name in the chat box and select Send SMS,” he said.
IDC analyst Richard Murphy said he believes Google has re-launched a nice application. “However, when most people send SMS messages, they send them from their phone,” Murphy said.
“Over 200 billion SMS messages were sent during the third quarter in the U.S.,” Murphy estimated. “People are now using text messaging more than they are making phone calls.”
According to Google, the service will only work for cell phones in the U.S. The service will send messages to any U.S.-based cell phone number, regardless of where the sender or phone happens to be. Each time you type in a new number, Google will save it in your contacts.
SMS message from GMail to a cell phone will receive incoming text messages that originate from a Google number with a 406 area code, which is equivalent to “G0O” on cell-phone keypads. “Recipient of SMS will be able to reply to this text from the cell phone just like you would reply to any other text,” Dirac said.
The messages are sent back to Google’s Gmail servers, and replied SMS are placed into the recipient’s Gmail chat window. “Each of your friends’ messages will come from a different 406 number, so you can reply to any message and it will be delivered to the right person,” Dirac explained. “Messages from the same person will always come from the same number, so you can even bookmark it in your phone.”
SMS recipients can also reply with the word “BLOCK” to stop receiving text messages from a particular Gmail user, or send the word “STOP” to block SMS message from Gmail altogether.
Still, Murphy notes that many people now subscribe to unlimited SMS plans. “This allows the user to feel free to send messages whenever they want,” he said.
In addition to Gmail, Yahoo has the similar SMS capabilities. However, Yahoo allows text messages to be delivered free from the Web, some cell-phone users must pay a fee for each message they receive.