The company that dominates the online search and advertising sector – and dabbles in photo-sharing, solar energy, and all other sorts of stuff – may soon improve its audio communication offering in a major way.  Google has reportedly taken a significant step towards making Google Voice more of a Skype competitor.

Michael Arrington wrote late yesterday, "[W]e’ve confirmed that they have now built a Google Voice desktop application to make and receive calls.  From a user perspective, this will let Google Voice users take calls right from their desktop."

Of course, the product isn’t out yet, or you’d be hearing about it through more official channels.  But Arrington continued, "When will the new application launch?  Possibly soon.  Earlier this week Google started testing the application internally."

This development stems from Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5, which occurred back in November.  And as you may remember, there was a fairly tight bond between the two companies even before the purchase (two recent Gizmo5 blog posts were titled "Introducing GizmoVoice – A Free Phone Line Using Google & Gizmo5" and "Add Gizmo5 Calling Directly To Gmail!").

Expect the Google Voice upgrade to exhibit a fairly high degree of polish, then, and as Arrington implied, bet on it debuting sooner rather than later.