The new chat functionality will work on PCs with Windows XP or Vista, as well as on Macs with OS X 10.4 or later. The plugin will work with all the major browsers, including Google's own Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.

We have not been able to test the video and voice quality of these chats yet, but we will update this post once we get a chance to try it out for ourselves.

Skype?

Interestingly, Google Talk, Google's desktop chat program does not have any video functionality yet, though Google enabled voice chat for Google Talk a long time ago. By adding voice and video chat, Google is clearly going up against Skype, which has made video chat one of its main features in the latest version of its software.

The clunky launch of Yahoo! Live last week has a lot of people talking about live video online. There's a long list of services that you can use to do web based public broadcast of live video, but those services aren't what you'd use for small group, private sessions. Forrester explained the landscape well in a report last year, "Legacy videoconference systems of all types have failed to live up to their promise because of technical complexity and user interface issues." The tech problems are being solved and a free, cross platform solution with recording is great - but interface issues remain.

There were lots of little issues that I and the people I chatted with experienced, including substantial interface confusion, occasional pixelation of international participants, file transfer/path strangeness and some people reported undesirable CPU demands.

That said, Oovoo is a service that immediately demonstrates its usefulness when you get a group of people on that have something to say. It's got a very Skype-on Windows type of interface, it's got a good feature set and the video/audio quality is generally very good.

The fact that Oovoo requires download of a desktop client seems like a drawback for very casual users. In almost any case where I am looking to do a quick multiperson video chat I will refer people to MeBeam and maybe Tokbox - both very easy to use web apps. There are a lot of options.

If I am going to do regular private chats and want to record, do file transfer, etc. then I may set up Oovoo with a group of people. People comfortable with trying out new web apps, and comfortable with video conferencing, probably don't have much need for Oovoo except for the recording feature which right now is Windows only. If you're working with people who don't feel as comfortable in that world though - then this high quality, more formal desktop service may treat you well. In those kinds of circumstances the fact that it's both Windows and Mac friendly will be much appreciated.