Google just announced new, exciting features added to its e-mail platform: starting today, Gmail users will be able to make voice and video calls with each other and even hosting conference calls, allowing for a potentially much faster way of communicating and connecting with others. The feature is built on the pre-existing chat functionality embedded in Gmail and, even if not quite as sophisticated as other tools such as Skype or Meebo, it is fairly easy to install and use, and should make a welcome addition to Gmail.

The move aims at enriching the user experience for all the Google webmail users by adding a very unique feature, even though it should also be pointed out that the resulting product still appears to be needing some refinement and, at this stage, is far from being in the position to be a menace for the much more versatile Skype, the VoIP company founded by former PayPal employees that allows for calls from and to landlines and mobile phones all around the world and with an ever-growing user base.

A recent post on the Google blog contains instructions on how to see this new feature in action:

"Just click on the new "Video & more" menu in a Gmail chat window and select "Start video chat" or "Start voice chat." You can switch to a full screen view or pop out the chat window and change the size and positioning as you wish. Of course, not everyone has a webcam, but even if you don't, you can still have voice conversations alongside your email and regular chat."

When tested, the audio and video quality seems very high and smooth, possibly better than that of Skype. Rafe Needleman from CNET speculates this might be the case mostly because, unlike Skype's pure point-to-point architecture, Gmail's data traffic all runs through Goo

gle's servers, which have the necessary bandwidth to sustain a very large amount of voice and video data streaming through their machines and reducing the call latency.

Software engineer Justin Uberti wrote on Gmail's official blog that the service "uses open standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat", also talking about several deals that Google has made with high-end webcam producers: the full list is available from here and features discounts of up to 30 percent.

"Voice and Video", as the new feature is pragmatically being called, was developed by Google's engineering group in Sweden, where the search engine acquired a start-up named "Marratech" back in April 2007: Serge Lachapelle, the Swedish Google product manager writing the post that announced this new service, used to be the VP of product management at that company previous to its acquisition. Since Marratech also produced a useful whiteboard application to share documents and images much more easily, some speculate that we might see that product too integrated in Gmail once it will reach a sufficient maturity level.

Meanwhile, Google Talk might soon get video capabilities soon, even though Google spokesmen declined to comment to this regard. This, together with the soon to come SMS capabilities to be added to Gmail will provide for a truly integrated and feature-rich 2.0 communication platform.

The first time users will try to use the new service, they will be promted to install a proprietary plugin, about 2 MB in size, that currently supports Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome on a PC, and Firefox on Apple's OS X: support for additional platforms, such as GNU/Linux, might come later on. More information on this new service is available starting from this page.