Google Talk to Add Video Conferencing

"Gmail Chat, the web-based version of Google Talk, added last year voice and video chat. The feature is now available in iGoogle and orkut, but it will probably be added to other Google services, as well.

SFGate reports that Google will improve the service significantly in the coming months.

Gmail's voice and video chats are now limited to one-to-one communications, but Google wants to broaden that capability to more than two participants and make it more robust all around for Apps.

'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,' said Rishi Chandra, a Google Apps product manager. 'It's a great opportunity for us to push that space along.'

It's not clear whether Google plans to integrate Marratech's video conferencing software, acquired in 2007.

Other features that will be added to Google's services: 'intelligent meeting scheduling in Google calendar', 'intelligent workflow in the [Google Docs] applications', 'lots of new functionality being developed especially around formatting' in Google Docs.