Gmail video chat is disappointerrific
Remember when Gmail first came out? Virtually unlimited email storage, free! A few people bitched about the ads, but even those were an improvement over Hotmail and Yahoo, which shoved ads into the middle of personal messages rather than alongside them. Nearly five years later, Gmail's new video chat feature is resoundingly meh by comparison. CNET old-timer Rafe Needleman, who got advance review access, listed shortcomings rather than breakthroughs in his writeup. Needleman had embedded in his article a self-produced video demo by one of the Google engineers who built the thing. The doofy-but-sincere video has been removed from YouTube. Dear Google PR: That's everything wrong with your company right there.