TECH CRUNCH
STEVE GILLMOR
12 NOV 08
Google’s release of its Gmail Video service is noteworthy for several reasons. It is integrated into the Gmail console, adding voice and video services to the realtime console that is being built out around XMPP. It is remarkably easy to use; Dan Farber just called to test the service and I popped the window out and continued chatting with him while returning to this post. Several alerts on Yammer and Friendfeed’s realtime IM competed briefly in other chat windows. Oh, and Google just added about a quarter of its version of Silverlight to my MacBook Air. Call it Silverlite.
If I hadn’t already installed the new service yesterday to get an advanced look, Farber’s call this morning would have prompted me to download and install a 2MB plugin. The code works with Intel Macs and Vista or XP, and so far only on Firefox and Safari (with some install issues) on the Mac. So by installing the plugin, I’ve basically added a significant part of Google’s multimedia services to this machine. It’s not Flash either. It’s cross-platform, it’s RIA code, it’s not Flash. Am I making my point?