The revolution will be
live-chatted

This week Google launched voice and video chat capabilities on Gmail, its free email and chat service. Users interested in trying the service can visit Gmail, open a chat window for any of their contacts, push Options and download the video software.

The offering — powered by Vidyo — is both PC and Mac-ready. Gmail users without a webcam can chat by voice.

This marks the first time a video/voice chat service has been offered through a mainstream email program. It is likely other companies, which were quick to follow suit when Google integrated chat into Gmail, will also avail video and voice chat to email users.

Last month Google enabled users to integrate hosted office applications, such as Calendar and Docs, into their Gmail interfaces. Despite these innovations, Gmail remains markedly less popular — and less-used — than Yahoo's email program, which served 88.4 million users in August, versus Gmail's 26 million, reports comScore.