Yesterday, Google has decided to make a silent release of its latest service on the free email, Gmail providing free messaging all over the world to the users. The service is paid to the Google apps customers though. With this service you can send a message to any phone in the world directly from the chat window. Just add a phone number to the contact and you are all set to go.

However, you have a few conditions that restrict the number of messages you can sent. Each message is a single credit and Google has already provided 50 credits to all the users by default. Once you finish the 50 per day you cannot use the service unless you get a reply to the chat box. Each reply is worth 5 credits and regardless of the number of credits you gain you can only have a maximum of 50 credits at any given time.

Google is rolling out the service in partnership with cellular operators, which means they would share revenue with Google out of SMSes users on their network send. It specifies a way to buy more SMS credits.
In India the service currently is restricted to customers of Aircel, Idea, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata Indicom and some circles of Vodafone. BSNL, MTNL and Airtel are not supported as of now.

On adding credits to the acount Google said, "You can always send an SMS to your own phone, and then reply to that message multiple times. Every time you send a reply message, your SMS credit is increased by five. Effectively, you're buying more messages by paying your phone company for these outgoing messages”.

In case you run out of the 50 SMS and receive no replies, one credit is added to your account after 24 hours so you can still use the service.

(AW- Anil)