Google Friday announced an updated version of its Chrome Voice extension, which now boasts some extremely noteworthy features, which are an indication that Google would add soft phone functionality to the browser directly through its takeover of Gizmo5.

The changes that are a part of the recently-announced Google Voice extension include – the addition of a toolbar button that displays the number of unread messages in your Google Voice inbox; a clickable calling option to phone numbers on websites via Google Voice; and calling and free text messaging facility, with instant access to the user’s most recent messages with transcripts. 

The most notable of these additions is the click to call functionality to web pages, which provides the required hyperlink to the phone numbers on a web page, like a Yelp page or the online address book of the user. The clicking of the link pops up a window which asks about the phone number to be called to, calls up the number, and puts the call through.

The installation of the new Chrome Voice extension is fairly easy for the Windows Chrome users, while Mac users need to use the latest Chromium build for the functionality. For installing the extension, users should browse to the extension page; click ‘Install;’ and click on some check boxes to sign away their rights to privacy!