Video chat with the whole team with Hangouts in Gmail

Posted by Fred Brewin, Product Manager

Just like many of you, at Google we tend to live in our email inboxes. If your business has already gone Google, you know that Gmail lets you email, chat, call phones, and video chat - making it easy to connect with teammates across continents and time zones. Today we are excited to announce that we’ll be making that communication experience even better by powering video chat with the new Google+ Hangouts technology.

Unlike the old video chat, which was based on peer-to-peer technology, Hangouts utilize the power of Google’s network to deliver higher reliability and enhanced quality. While all Gmail users will experience these benefits, if you’ve created a Google+ profile you can invite up to nine other participants to your video meetings and take advantage of advanced features like screen sharing and integrated Google Docs collaboration. Watch the video below to see how easy it is to communicate and connect with your coworkers using Hangouts in Gmail.



Even if you haven’t created a Google+ profile or if your domain hasn’t enabled Google+ yet, one-to-one video chat in Gmail will still be powered by the new Hangouts video technology.

We’ll be gradually rolling out Hangouts in Gmail, starting today with personal Google Accounts, followed by Google Apps accounts on the Rapid Release track in the coming weeks and later by Apps accounts on the Scheduled Release track. You can visit our Help Center to learn more about system requirements for Hangouts and how to optimize your network for Hangouts.