It's a war out there. Days after Google unleashed its Plus, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg promised more action and an ‘awesome' feature. On Wednesday, he launched the ‘awesome' feature — a video chat, besides group chat and a bigger chat sidebar. Of these, the video chat feature was supposed to the ‘awesome' one, but the general view was that there was nothing awesome about it. Gmail had incorporated it years ago. Even the ‘quick' video chat option was already in Gmail. At the end of the event, people were left wondering whether it was just a quick reaction on Zuckerberg's part to Google+.
Google+, even in its beta version, is far ahead in the video chat feature. The Hangout in Google+ feature can handle multiple video chats (up to 10 persons). A user who has tried out both Hangout and Facebook video chat says Hangout has several features that make it far ahead of Facebook's video chat. “You can select any person and bring him on the main screen. You can also mute the persons you don't want,” he says. It is possible to start Hangout sessions based on circles, and it is also possible to have one-to-one Hangout sessions. It need not necessarily be group video chat.
This has made several bloggers and writers think that Zuckerberg's ‘awesome' feature is just a big yawn. Richi Jennings of
This is also being regarded as Microsoft's way of taking on Google with the help of Facebook and Skype (Facebook video chat uses Skype's technology).
Google+ seems to have won this round hands down. The only thing that is holding up Google+ from creating a bigger impact seems to be the restricted invites. Users expect a huge boost to Google+ once it opens up to all.