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Mac users have been waiting years for Google’s Talk application to come to the Apple platform. Likewise, Google Apps users have been waiting for a cross platform Skype-like program to audio and perhaps video chat in their browser.?

The install is a simple 2.4 megabyte download that installs plugins for your browser.?

After installation you must restart your browser(s).? Initially I was the only one to be able to use this feature (I am a premier Apps customer).? However, throughout the day more and more of my Google contacts have been getting the little green icon (see below in the upper left corner).

After reopening your browser, you won’t really notice anything different until you go into Gmail and look at your Google Talk contacts.? Those who have also installed the Google Video Chat plug-in will have a different icon next to their name.? This works very similarly to iChat.? Those who only have audio don’t have the video camera link.

One you get chatting, it works pretty much like iChat or Skype.? The latency is about the same and the quality is somewhere between Skype and iChat - which is better than I thought I’d see in a web app.?

Google Video chat is based in Flash so make sure you have the latest and greatest version of Flash on your computer.??

There are some hiccups as you’d expect from a first run product from Google.? The camera switching between apps didn’t function as smoothly as I would have liked.? I had to restart Firefox to get it to "let go" of the camera, so I could use iChat again to video conference.

Overall, though, this is an incredibly solid product and adds a world of value to the already "steal of a deal" Google Apps suite.? And it is also nice as a Mac user to be on par (Google Talk-wise) with our PC brethren.? Now when will we see Chrome?

This is great! And video chat does not get any easier than that.

How is this different than using iChat with GoogleTalk which I’ve been doing for quite some time now?

It’s great that Google has decided to create this applet for both PCs and Macs. But I have a question, can a Mac user use his iSight camera to video-chat with a PC user with a conventional webcam by using this feature?

Looks like PowerPC Macs are not supported, though. Shame they had to limit this to Intel-only machines.

yeah, the non-power pc thing is crap.

Can you enlighten me how do you manage to find out that the technology is based on Flash?

You mean the they bundle H.264 encoding codec together with Flash as the plugin?

Flash’s player and video encoder has supported H.264 flvs for a while now. I’m not sure but I presume this thing uses streaming flv.

Now we’re just waiting for a new release of Adium supporting that feature!

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