Google Developing Skype Competitor for Chrome

With their initial public offering still on hold, Skype is probably wishing they hit the stock market sooner in light of today’s news: as part of the open-source WebRTC (real-time communication) audio and video project, Google is now looking to specifically integrate video-chatting software into Chrome, with added portability for use with Firefox and Opera, too.

Royalty-free, Google is practically encouraging any and everyone to take a crack at building their own Skype via web apps (Javascript APIs). Gmail looks to gain the most from the project, as its Chat client would no longer require plug-ins.

[via Engadget and CNet]