GoogleMail launches voice and video chat
Makes it easy to chat with video and voice right alongside your email
London, 11th November 2008. Google today launched GoogleMail voice and video chat, making it simple
for people around the world to chat in high-quality video for free
right within GoogleMail. All you need is a webcam and a small web
browser plugin, and you can start video chatting with your friends,
family, and coworkers on GoogleMail and Google Apps. GoogleMail voice
and video chat lets you start a video chat without switching to another
application or signing up for another account. And if you don't have a
webcam, you can simply chat by voice. We've made it easy enough that
your family -- or your employees -- will actually use it.
The launch comes as video communication grows in popularity; many of
the latest lines of laptops, for example, come with built-in webcams.
Businesses stretched across continents and timezones want more
face-to-face collaboration among their employees, but in this economic
climate, they may be looking for ways to cut travel and IT expenses.
Having a meeting with a colleague over video allows communications to
continue in person without the expense of traveling there. Whether
it's a coworker demoing a new product, or a first-time grandmother
saying hello to her new grandson, sometimes there's no substitute for
speaking to and seeing someone. Google is offering browser-based voice
and video chat as a natural extension to webmail and instant messaging,
allowing people to choose how they want to communicate at each moment
-- by email, instant message, voice, or video.
To get started, open a GoogleMail chat window, click on the "Options"
menu at the bottom, and choose "Add voice/video chat," which will walk
you through a one-time installation of a free plugin (a quick 2 MB
download). When you re-open GoogleMail you'll notice your "Options"
link in your chat window has changed to "Video & more." Open this
menu and click "Start video chat" to see and hear your partner in
high-quality video. You can pop out the video and change its size and
position, or switch to full screen.
GoogleMail is the first leading webmail service to include video chat.
The feature is being rolled out over the next day or so on PCs and on
Macs. Google Apps customers get this service as well, at no extra
charge, and can video chat with any other GoogleMail or Apps users.
GoogleMail has always been about more than just email -- it's
increasingly a communications hub, always pushing the limits of
browser-based applications. Video chat is the latest in a stream of
GoogleMail features that includes GoogleMail for mobile 2.0 and
animated emoticons and more.
To use voice and video chat, your PC must have Windows XP or a more
recent version, or an Intel-Based Mac with Mac OS X v10.4 or later. It
works in browsers that support the latest version of GoogleMail (Google
Chrome, Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 7.0, and Safari 3.0).
Further info please email: press-uk@google.com
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