Coming Soon: Real Time Chat In Google Chrome

Opera is a supporter of WebRTC as well.

Following Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype, it looks like the search giant has video chat plans of its own.

Turns out, Google is integrating its WebRTC software into the Google Chrome web browser, which will allow users to talk in real-time without having to install Skype or similar chat clients.

Rian Liebenberg, Google’s engineering director wrote:

Until now, real time communications required the use of proprietary signal processing technology that was mostly delivered through plug-ins and client downloads. With WebRTC, we are open sourcing the voice and video engine technologies from our acquisition of GIPS, giving developers access to state of the art signal processing technology, under a royalty free BSD style license. This will allow developers to create voice and video chat applications via simple HTML and JavaScript APIs.

According to TomsGuide, WebRTC uses two audio codecs, iSAC for high-bandwidth connections and iLBC for narrow bandwidth connections, which were obtained with the acquisition of GIPS. As for video part, Google will use its own VP8 codec.

Since WebRTC is an open source project, other web browsers will have an access to all the audio and video capabilities as well, making the following announcement even more exciting.

[Thanks, Blake, fforever]