Google has just added audio and video chat to Gmail, which is assumed to bring competition for video chat service providers like Skype. The new chat tools essentially offer most of the features of Skype, or Apple’s iChat, within the standard Gmail interface.They have already launched SMS and soon Google’s e-mail client will be a one stop shop for almost every form of communication you can think of: e-mail, chat, video chat, audio chat, and SMS.
Once the plugin is install, using the new features is very simple, just hover over any name in your Gmail chat list and select “Start video chat” or “Start voice chat.” There’s a full screen view and you can also choose to pop out the chat into a new window.
The plugin (which you can grab from the download page) presents a significant downside though — it means that even if you install the plugin, you’ll have to wait for your friends and contacts to do likewise before you can video chat. Although it’s not a huge barrier to getting video chat in Gmail, given the Google’s chat network isn’t most people’s first choice, it may be a little while before the video options become ubiquitous among your contacts.
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