For a while, it worked really well. I lived in Italy and had a Google Voice number from Oregon, and I could just make US calls for free from within Gmail and it

For a while, it worked really well. I lived in Italy and had a Google Voice number from Oregon, and I could just make US calls for free from within Gmail and it didn't just work ok, it was pretty good. I could also place video calls to people who were contacts right there in Gmail with one click, and it worked well too. It's not that their system has stagnated - they've actively made it much worse and more difficult to use.