After email services that 'read' your emails and display relevant advertisements, aka Google Mail, a new service is here that 'listens' to your internet phone calls and displays relevant advertisements. Call it a 'breach of privacy' or call it 'subsidized by ad revenues'; either way, looks like services like these are here to stay.

Puddingmedia, a Silicon Valley based company announced a public trial of its new software on its website. Visitors can place free calls to U.S. and Canadian phone numbers from their computers using headsets or microphones. The phone numbers are to be entered via a Web browser, which is also where the ads and links show up.

The company's aim is not to be an independent provider of ad-financed Internet phone calls, but to license its speech-recognition service to other companies that use Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. Puddingmedia said it was talking to several possible partners but can't name any yet.

Outfits like eBay Inc.'s Skype unit would be possible partners. Skype provides free calls between computers but charges for calls to phone numbers so it can recoup connection fees charged by phone companies. Those costs could possibly be offset with an advertising model like Puddingmedia's.

The actual speech recognition is performed at Puddingmedia's servers in Fremont, Calif., not on the user's computer. In the test, the quality of the call did not seem to be affected by the extra step.

Ariel Maislos, chief executive of Puddingmedia, stressed that the calls are not stored in any way, nor does Puddingmedia keep a record of which keywords were picked up from a particular call.