Fax Featured Article

Fax technology isn't tops on a lot of people's lists when it comes to thoughts of technology these days. Often replaced by e-mail in many cases, the idea of shuttling paper and its replicas back and forth just seems a bit old and stale by comparison. But faxing is still used in a lot of offices, and as such, it's not too surprising to see Google (News - Alert) give regular fax users a little extra boost with Google Fax for Gmail.

Google Fax allows Gmail users to not only send faxes, but also receive them, by way of a fairly simple process. First, Gmail users will set up an Online Fax Number, which is essentially a virtual phone number that other users can send faxes to, and from which users can send faxes to other fax numbers. Some companies, like RingCentral (News - Alert), offer free trials of Online Fax Numbers for use by those who want to have faxes sent to their number. Then, once the Online Fax Number in question is linked to a user's Gmail account, those who send faxes will be sending them to that Online Fax Number, the produce of which is stored in a user's Gmail inbox.

Since a fax is little more than the electronic transmission of the contents of a document, it stands to reason that sending that transmission to an email inbox wouldn't be too big a stretch. And faxes certainly still have their place—sometimes it's necessary to send a specific document, and send it more rapidly than can be done by postal mail or physical delivery services like UPS or FedEx—so using a fax machine can still be a smart way to move actual documents, or at least facsimiles (which is where the term “fax” comes from in the first place) so close that, in some cases, they can be accepted as actual documents. Plus, with such an approach, there's the added benefit of having a permanently stored copy of the document offsite and available for printing at most any time, as long as Google's Gmail servers are operable.

Businesses that still use fax machines generally use them for specific purposes, and thus do a lot of faxing. A service like Google Fax can allow that faxing to still remain part of the operation, but with added controls and protections that the previous method simply couldn't offer. When the original elements of a service remain untouched but with extra—not to mention valuable—features added, it's hard not to make the migration to that newest service. Combining faxing with Gmail looks like a smart idea, and an idea that many businesses—especially those that do a lot of faxing—will likely want to make a part of their normal operations.