Video Conferencing for Online Meetings

Google Adds Voice and Video to GMail Web Application

November 16th, 2008 by Video Conferencing Expert

GMail, the eternally beta web based email client, released a significant enhancement to it’s suite of applications. Users of the GMail service can now video conference with video and voice, or voice only through the application. The service is free and requires a free plugin to be able to use the video/voice, voice only service within GMail. Unlike other popular video-chat services such as AOL, the video session launches within the same window as the application, keeping an integrated look and feel to the service.

Google representatives claim that this is the first “leading webmail service” to include video chat in a web-based email client. The service should already be available to all GMail users. Being a web-based service, video chat is available to both PC and Mac users alike, requiring only the simple plugin download. Users can view the video full screen, or scale it to any size they desire.

Pund-IT Principal Analyst Charles King:

When Google got into email and was the first to offer loads of free online storage, it really started shifting how users viewed what their online experience should be. Specifically, that they should have access to these services for free or very little money. Google keeps upping the ante for the rest of the industry by leveraging its infrastructure to offer these services for free.

The release of the GMail video chat feature, comes on the heals of a Google Video application that was released in early September. This video feature, however, was targeted more towards sharing corporate training videos and high resolution information internally, more than short, live video conferences that this new service provides. The release of GMail’s video chat service also comes at a time of increased interest in collaborative technologies, as video conferencing services, instant messaging and social networks are being used more than ever.

Posted in Google    Closed

Comments are closed.