Google recently unveiled a new phone call feature in Gmail as well as Google Voice integration for it. Not it's introducing rather minor feature, but one that should prove very useful in a number of cases.

"Google Voice lets you take charge of your telephony experience, giving you one number that rings all your phones. But what if you’re not around to answer any of them?," ponders Google Software Engineer Brian Peterson.

"Starting today, whenever you miss a call, you can see a notification in your Google Voice inbox, or receive an email notification, or both," he announced.

The idea is simple, missed calls now show up in Gmail and the Google Voice Inbox as well. Those calls would show up on any phone you have linked to your Voice account, of course.

But now that Google allows you to make and take calls from Gmail, you may not be around your phone to see them. What's more, missed calls on mobile phones may be easy to dismiss and your landline phone may not even support the feature.

But it would be much harder to not notice an email notification about missed calls.

However, if you don't want missed-call notifications clogging up your email account you can disable it altogether. You can also disable the inbox notifications.

"We’re excited to add this new feature that’s been a common request from Google Voice users. So keep those suggestions coming, we’re listening!," he invited users to make their voice heard.

The Gmail phone call feature has proved very popular, at least by Google's account. 10 million phone calls were made or received from Gmail in just the first week, 1 million in the first day, so it looks like the users haven't taken long to warm up to the new capabilities.