WebRTC is going to reach that milestone thanks in part to Firefox 22, which was just released this week. The new version of Firefox comes with WebRTC enabled in its beta version, which should add a large number of users to the addressable market for WebRTC developers.

Uberti also said that WebRTC is going to come to iOS devices soon: Apple hasn’t joined the efforts to implement and standardize WebRTC yet, but Google wants to nonetheless give developers a way to address users on iPads and iPhones through the release of a native toolkit.

Of course, there is another holdout: Microsoft has been pushing forward with its own version of WebRTC, which some have seen as an effort to torpedo the standard. Uberti had a much more optimistic take on the differences Friday, saying that Microsoft has been “a great participant in the standards.” He added: “I’m very optimistic that we are going to see a version of (Internet Explorer) that supports this technology in the not-too distant future.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user  Tsahi Levent-Levi.

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Google software engineer Justin Uberti shared the news on the company’s Chromium blog:

“Chrome now includes the PeerConnection API, which allows developers to create web apps with real-time audio and video calling without the need for a plug-in. Together, PeerConnection and thegetUserMedia API represent the next steps in WebRTC, a new standard which aims to allow high quality video, audio, and data communications on the web.”

Uberti illustrated the capabilities of the new API with a demo video chat application, which can be accessed after installing the latest Chrome beta release.

WebRTC is a big deal for Google: The company aims to replace the proprietary plugin it has been using to facilitate Google+ Hangout video chats with a standards-based solution that would work in a variety of browsers without the download of any additional plugins. WebRTC could also eventually lead to more interoperability across a number of video chat and messaging services, and it could be an even bigger disruption to mobile video communication.

However, it is likely going to take some time before WebRTC becomes a widely adopted standard. Microsoft publicly joined the WebRTC camp in August – but also slowed things down a bit by proposing a different approach than then one now implemented by Google.

Image courtesy of Flickr user  Tsahi Levent-Levi.

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