Google released its Voice and Video chat today, and our own unscientific tests here at New Media Rights and UCAN show that the audio and video quality easily rivals competing services such as Skype. The biggest difference is that this is Google making a move into the voice and video area and it has the potential to alter the playing field a fair amount.
For those of you who use Gmail, think of how often you use the Gchat feature which allows you to talk to any other gmail user in realtime from within your email. Now add Voice and Video to that service and you have Gmail Voice and Video Chat. With many people and organizations adopting Gmail as their email client, the potential for day to day casual use of video and voice chat beyond the current user base is tremendous. Right now, you can go and download programs like Skype, but Google building a service like this into its email client makes voice and video more readily accessible than ever. We think that's pretty cool.
