Google Adds Voice, Video Chat to Gmail, Apps

11.11.08

  Total posts: 1

by Chloe Albanesius

Fearful that the tone of your instant messages is sometimes lost in translation? Google on Tuesday announced that it is integrating a voice and video plug-in for it Gmail Chat offering that lets you see or hear the friend with which you are chatting.

Users will need to download and install a plug-in, and have access to a Webcam for video purposes. Google has partnered with Logitech and Buy.com to offer discounts of up to 30 percent on several cameras, as well as free shipping, until November 30.

A $99.99 Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, for example, is available for $69.99, while a $49 Logitech QuickCam Communicate MP is now $39.99.

"I'm a big user of Gmail chat. Being able to switch from email to chat as needed, all within the same app, is really great for productivity," Justin Uberti, a Google software engineer, wrote in a blog post. "But people can only type so fast, and even with our new emoticons, there are still some things that just can't be expressed in a chat message."

Once installed, click the "video & more" link inside the chat window and select "start video chat" or "start voice chat." The friend you are trying to contact will hear a ring and be given the option to accept or ignore the call. Users can then chat within the Gmail tab or pop it out into a separate window and expand or decrease its size.

Voice and video chat is available on Macs running Mac OS X v10.4 or later and PCs running Windows XP or higher. A link to download the offering will be rolled out to all Gmail and Google Apps accounts in the coming days, but it is also available directly at http://mail.google.com/videochat.

The video function was designed via open standards, "which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat," Uberti wrote.

The offering was developed by Google teams in the U.S. and Sweden "so collaborating across continents and time zones is a fact of life for us, and it sure is easier (and greener) to click 'Start video chat' than to get on a plane!" he said.