Google Ads Video and Voice Chat to Gmail

[www.AmCy.org]

From WSJ:

Google Inc. added audio and video chatting tools to its Gmail email service Tuesday, its latest attempt to upgrade the service to draw more interest from consumer and business users.

The new features compete with eBay Inc.'s Skype and other Web conferencing tools that have grown more popular as more laptops come with built in Web-cameras and connection speeds continue to improve.

Starting this week, Gmail users who download an additional piece of software can pull up an expandable video chat screen from within Gmail and start communicating with contacts on the other end. Users without webcams will be able to chat via voice.

The Mountain View, Calif., search giant is offering the new tools globally as it chases rivals with bigger email and instant-messaging user bases. Getting more of the online communications business is a key part of Google's strategy to diversify beyond its search and search advertising services into online software, like word-processing, spreadsheets and other communication tools.

Gmail is the fourth-most popular webmail service in the U.S., behind offerings from Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, according comScore Inc. But it is the fastest growing, registering a 39% increase in unique monthly visitors from September 2007 to September 2008.

AmCy