Google’s redesigned the chat window in Gmail, making the video, voice and group chat functions much more prominent via some new buttons. While these features were all available previously, they were hidden away in a “Video & More” link at the bottom of the window, which many users may have missed — now you can access them with a single click.
Since video and voice chats require a plugin, if you click the button and your chat buddy doesn’t have it installed, Gmail will invite them to install it first.
Google’s Josh Teague notes that a similar change on iGoogle and orkut resulted in a significant uptick in the number of video calls made. Indeed, small changes like this help to bring the day that video chat is ubiquitous a bit closer.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010-2015
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