Google looks to play in Skype's space

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) may have seen Skype as a way to pick some low-hanging fruit in the video chat marketplace, when it purchased the company for $8.5 billion last month, but it may now be looking at a little tougher harvest: Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is beginning to build its own open-source audio and video chat into its Chrome browser.

The search giant last month released the source code for WebRTC, or Web Real-Time Communications, with hopes that developers would begin using it to provide chat and video chat in Web apps. It acquired the technology when it bought Global IP Solutions, an Oslo-based VoIP software developer, in 2010 for $68.2 million.

"Our goal is to enable Chrome with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple Javascript APIs," Google said in a Chromium Developer blog post. "We are working hard to provide full RTC support in Chrome all the way from WebKit down to the native audio and video parts. When we are done, any web developer shall be able to create RTC applications, like the Google Talk client in Gmail, without using any plugins but only WebRTC components that runs in the sandbox."

Google's long term goal, obviously, is to integrate this with its growing Google Voice service and to expand its own role as a player in videoconferencing, through browsers instead of through dedicated applications.

For more:
- read this CNET article

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