I have been using Google's Voice&Video chat exclusively since the day Microsoft announced the Skype purchase. Compared to skype, the experience is horrible. The audio and video quality is sensibly worse, the number of random disconnections and video freezes is pretty high. After a few minutes there is a noticeable lag in the voice connection, which gets higher with time. The general audio quality is worse then I remember having with "Speak Freely" back in the 90s, while I used a dial up modem. The Firefox plugin randomly refuses to work, and returns also random numeric error codes. Skype had, in my experience, none of these issues. Everything "just worked". Google is far, far away from that. All in all, it is so bad that it should be embarassing for Google to have it associated with its name.

The only thing going for Google is that it is, after Skype, the only cross-platform voice&video offering existing on the market.

Huh. I switched to Google Video for speaking with my parents on the other side of the world, because Skype video just plain stopped working for some weird reason. It's slightly better both in terms of sound and video, and so far I've experienced less stuttering and freezes.

Skype is a P2P based application so performance can vary considerably based on your location and network topology.

For this same reason, I continue to use Skype. However, the technical issues you mentioned are nothing to Google if it puts its mind to it. The difficult part is getting a userbase that justifies those efforts. This period of market instability is the perfect opportunity to do so.

I dunno. Google's already had bright minds working on it for some time. Trying to do it in a browser will probably always be inherently problematic. Why they don't launch a standalone "Google Voice and Video" client... if there's an opportunity there, and they really want to own it, that'd be the route they should go, not more browser-plugin stuff.

Heck, perhaps this is part of what facebook's recent spate of desktop-engineer-hiring is going after?

Part of what I see is that Google does not have a good model for making Google Voice profitable given their revenue model because it doesn't drive eyeballs to Google search and the advertising customer base, and because datamining the communications of Google Voice's users for the sort of keywords and profiles useful for search has a huge potential for social blowback - imagine how some people would react to web page ad placement based on last night's booty call - not to mention the possible legal problems given the diversity of wiretap laws, e.g. state by state in the U.S. never mind world wide variations.

[Edit] Given changes in Google's leadership and the apparent emphasis on core function which seems to be underway along with the limited rollout which Google has done for Voice, I would not be surprised if it is destined for the same fate as Google Health over the next few years.

Of course it drives advertising revenue -- in the same way GMail does. More people using Google accounts every day is a plus for Google.

I think "probably always" is not a safe phrase to use when talking about the future of browsers.

And whether or not you agree with that, I think it's clear that's where Google's money is.

Uh, how is a browser plugin different from a client-side application? They're both running native code. I don't see any technical problem.

I have far better experience with Google Voice quality when calling phones, but also find it disconnects with gvoice-gvoice so prefer Skype when possible. But with Skype-Skype calls, video conferencing etc and the ease of use with older family members, Skype has become so useful quite frankly I'm afraid that if Skype dies we'll put thrown back into the land of having no single point of guaranteed communication between all types of computer users. I hope that Skype succeeds for this reason alone.

> Microsoft has already started driving Skype into the ground,

In what way has "Microsoft has already started driving Skype into the ground"?

They don't control the company yet and haven't had a say in any of these decisions?

What specific event are you referring to?

How has Microsoft "already started [to] drive Skype into the ground"?

I wasn't aware that Microsoft had taken control of Skype yet.

I have a hard time believing that.

The Microsoft and Skype deal just received regulatory approval on June 17th from FTC. There may be still be other regulatory hurdles to still pass in other regions.

The events in the article happened before that and it is unlikely that Skype would receive direction from Microsoft prior to closing.

Further, this is not Microsoft's first acquisition and the pattern is more consistent with PE than Microsoft.

If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd be very interested.