When Google introduced Google Voice a few months ago it sounded pretty much like a Skype clone for Google users. After an initial flurry of interest, it seems to have been all but forgotten outside of the subset of Gmail subscribers who use it. I have to admit that I not tried it.

Now Google has brought out its first major enhancements, making Google Voice more interesting. While I think this is a good step, it still has a way to go.

A VoIP service makes perfect sense for Google, which really is preeminently a communications company. With its new version, it has made Google Voice much more accessible to Gmail users by linking it to Google Chat. Instead of having to open a special Google Voice interface to use it, the link now appears at the top of the Chat list for U.S. users, on the left hand column of the main Gmail page, giving it much more presence. Part of the intention obviously is to encourage chat users to add voice and video to their chat sessions. And expanding the service to support calls to any wireline or cell phone of course makes the service much more useful — and at a very attractive price.

But is it enough? The problem is that like Skype it is tied to the computer. To make calls I have to use my computer; I cannot use a normal telephone handset. And people can only call my Google Voice number from Google Voice, which means from their computers, not their desk or cell phones. That means that I cannot replace either my landline service (in my case Vonage, also a VoIP service) or my cell phone with Google Voice. It becomes a tertiary voice service (after landline and cell phone), and honestly three phone services are at least one too many. Which is not to say that Google Voice will not have users; certainly Skype, which is in the same position, has its user population.

However, I doubt that Google will stop voice development at this point. From its inception Vonage has provided VoIP via regular telephone handsets, providing a service that appears to users to be exactly like the dedicated landline telephone service we all grew up with, but with no long distance charges. It does this by providing subscribers with a converter box that connects their internal telephones to their high-speed Internet connection. Nothing prevents Google Voice from doing something similar and in the process perhaps doing Vonage one better by providing users with voice dialing. That would allow users either to dial a number or voice dial someone’s Google account name, and be pretty cool besides.

But I expect another major step as well. Google already provides private e-mail and chat services for SMBs as well, of course, as its online version of basic office software, Google Documents. I would be surprised if it does NOT buy one of the several VoIP SMB telephone services now competing for your business out in the Cloud. Given the number of these and the immaturity of the market, a shakeout is inevitable, and virtual business calling is a logical direction for Google to take. So don’t be surprised if one day in the near future Google knocks on your office door offering a business version of Google Voice to go with its other business communications services. Then all it will need is a cellular telephone company. Given its deep pockets, even that is not impossible.