The future is here, or why Google’s video chat is amazing

Posted on Aug 23, 2010 in IT | 3 comments

If you ever watched The Jetsons, Hannah Barbara’s animated classic show from the 80s about what the future would be like, you know the following: we’ll all have robotic maids, get around in flying cars, and have conversations with one another with video, not just audio.

We may not have flying cars or robotic maids (yet), but video conversations are totally here. And brought to you—for free—by Google’s Gmail chat!

First things first: I know Skype has had video chat since 2006, and Apple’s new iPhone 4 includes FaceTime for true mobile video chat (albeit only to other iPhone 4 owners, and only over a WiFi connection—for now, at least). But as with many technology innovations, it’s not necessarily who’s first as it is who’s most. And by that awkward sentence I mean who has the critical mass of users to make the technology viable? Skype might be popular (100 million users in Jan. 2006, Wikipedia reports), but so is Gmail (176 million users in Dec. 2009 per Wikipedia’s Gmail entry). Arguments between what constitutes a “user” and the rate at which Gmail’s use was increasing at Dec. 2009 (hint: quickly), and Skype’s user base today are all somewhat moot. The point is, Gmail’s extremely widely used and unlike Skype, most users are already have Gmail open for purposes other than video chatting.

So the groundwork was laid when Google released video-based chatting in Nov. 2008. This portion of The Jetsons future, at least, was realized for computers running Windows XP/Vista/7 or Intel-based Mac OS computers (which is all of them since mid-2006). Just open Gmail in a web browser and fire up a chat session with someone in your contacts list. Notice the little video camera icon in the chat window? It means that user has installed the plug-in from Google (a quick, painless process that only requires restarting your web browser, not your computer), and you can video chat with them.

The effect is amazing

Google Talk's video chat makes moments like these a reality with virtually no configuration headaches. Just jump into the Jetsons-style future!

I’ve been writing about the background of video chat but that doesn’t convey its power and sheer “amazingness.” Maybe this will: I have a 6-month-old baby girl at home I miss terribly during the day. My MacBook Pro at home has a built-in webcam, as does the little 9″ Dell “Hackintosh” netbook I bring to my office (so named because it runs a—licensed!—copy of Mac OS X). One day I was text-chatting with my wife and noticed the camera icon on our chat window. Within five minutes we’d both installed the plug-in and with zero configuration nonsense, I was looking at my baby girl in a live video feed. I could see her, listen to her cooing, and she could hear and see me. Amazing!

Granted, the video isn’t always perfect; sometimes it gets a bit pixellated. And the video often has washed-out areas and dark shadows. But to be fair, the lighting in both locations are not optimized at all, and both computers are on wireless networks. Given some decent lighting and wired network connections, I’d bet the quality of the video would increase drastically. Yet it does work, and work amazingly well for a free, out-of-the-box installation. Thank you Google.

So while it might not replace dedicated video-conferencing solutions for business with more robust needs, I think Google Talk’s video chat really has brought a Jetsons-style future to a reality today. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go soak my finger; it was a hard day at Cogswell’s Cogs factory!

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