Google launches web-based Gmail Voice and Chat
I’ve been looking for a better web-based video chat service for a while. I’m not sure that Google’s new offering is going to take the place of Skype for me, but at least it’s another option out there. Rafe Needleman gave it a shot and felt that it used up a large amount of resources on his two-year old device. He also notes that it doesn’t offer comparable services that Skype currently offers, such as the ability to call out to landlines & mobiles, nor does it have any voicemail. I don’t see that as a huge issue for a first round product as it looks to be mainly an easy way to have a quick video chat with other Google contacts in a pinch and without downloading any software. Thoughts?
Makes no sense that it’s a seperate plugin either. Why not just do this in Flash, which people already have installed and covers way more platforms, etc?
meh, im glad it does not use flash.
now the question becomes, when will we see support from other xmpp compatible clients?
if that gets into place one could in theory use this alongside something like the gizmo project.
also, i see that linux support is not ready yet.
and i worry about their choice of video codec.
I guess I thought that google already had this. Hasn’t Yahoo had this for years?
Am I missing some “wow” facet of this?