Google Chrome has come a long way from being the newbie in the browser market to being a major and decisive player today, with a say on how all things Google are served to the people. I still remember the first time Google talked of Chrome and announced a web browser saying,

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

You can still read the legendary announcement here and read the Google Chrome comic here for a walk down memory lane.

Three years have passed since then and Google has brought awesome web-services and things are looking good on the user-level as well (clean and effective). The browser (not just Google Chrome but web browsers in general) is getting stronger day by day and Google Chrome is the first choice for those obsessed with speed.

The next step by Google is to provide a rich social experience inside the browser. I am not talking about Twitter or Facebook here. Think of contemporary communication mediums, ones that are still enjoyed by people. Spot on. Google is planning to bring audio and video chat into the browser as an inherent feature. This will eliminate the need for a third party web-app and a third party desktop application alike.

How is Google Chrome Planning on Being a Skype Killer?

WebRTC is an open source project to take things real time inside a browser. This is achieved using JavaScript APIs and HTML5. However, the backbone for the chat will be a service called GIPS, which is another one of Google’s acquisitions. GIPS specializes in Internet telephony and videoconferencing. Google already has the Google Voice card in place and this feature will bring Google as a major player in the VOIP market.

Once live, the technology can be used with anything Google provides or with any third party service, someone creates leveraging these technologies. The possibilities are endless here. This will most likely be Google’s next big announcement about Chrome.

Some further technical details are available here if you are interested. Check this chromium mailing list for clarification.