Gmail Launches Voice and Video Chat

Gmail adds video chat into its IM making it one step clear competitor to Yahoo Messenger. The great thing about this new feature is its web-enabled, that means every Gmail web users out there has access to this feature without need to install a separate application. To access this new feature, make sure to enable chat on Gmail and install the plug-in then click options on the chat window to reveal a menu to activate it.

 
Photo source from official press release email.

To learn more, you can visit the official Google KB site for voice and video chat.

This is clearly an awesome advantage to other IMs, but what makes me very excited about this feature is its inevitable API! Yes, imagine streaming videos not just for personal communication but for content broadcast itself and all powered freely by Google’s infrastructure!

Finally the only lame part to this new feature is the required installation of the plug-in; which is currently only supported in Windows and Mac; instead of using purely flash based video and voice technology like OpenFire’s Spark Web.