Gmail Calling Now Supports Multiple Calls and Call Waiting

Remember those old multi-line phones with all the buttons across the bottom? They gave you access to more than one line at a time, a feature now available in Google‘s Gmail.

According to the official Gmail Blog, this new multi-call capability

will let you put callers on hold with Gmail’s phone service, picking

up another call at the same time. Too bad there’s no music on

hold to entertain that first caller.

Whether you make a second call or not, you can now put any call on

 hold — useful in case you need to talk to someone in the room or grab something off the stove. Just press the “Hold” button and

 then “Resume” to start talking again.

This feature works across all call types (voice, video, and phone); the only restriction is that a maximum of two outgoing calls to

physical phones can be placed at once.

Best of all, U.S. and Canada calls using the Gmail phone and video system will be free through 2011, and all these new

multi-line features work with Gmail’s phone, voice and video calls.