Video Conferencing Coming To GMail Chat

By , Published November 7, 2009

Reports are circulating that GMail chat €“ the web-based version of Google Talk/GTalk €“ will be adding multi-user video chat/video conferencing to this other Google services in the coming months.
GMail Chat only supports one-to-one video chat at present.
app_Goog_Talk

Linux Users

Linux users can currently use the video chat feature via Empathy (with caveats attached), but with ChromeOS merely a few months away from beta release one could assume that an official GTalk client native to Linux, or at least improved support/support for other clients such as Empathy, may also be on it's way.
A stretch, sure, but a fantastic time to make available such a client.

“This [current Gmail capability] is the first step in a much broader set of features we hope to roll out over the next six to 12 months around video [and voice] chat capabilities. It’s a great opportunity for us to push that space along.”

~Rishi Chandra, a Google Apps product manager.
{via SFGate}
Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

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  • http://stevelove.org Steve Love

    With Gmail’s browser-based chat getting all the love for the last couple years, and with Chrome OS being largely browser-based, I would assume exactly the opposite as you: There’s no reason for Google to develop a native Linux client nor to improve support for other clients.

  • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

    its a must for Google to make their web applications available, as there will be //ave on the horizon that will be used for collaboration so by any means they should exclude Linux users. but anyway its nice

  • http://stesind.blogspot.com/ Steffen

    It depends on Adobe flash support for webcam and mic on Linux. Actual there is no, but they are working on.