Aside from its recently enabled free flu tracker covering the entire country, Google announced yesterday new options for its Gmail service, which include voice and video chatting.

By clicking the new ‘Video & more’ menu available in Gmail’s chat window, users will be able to enjoy free voice and video conversations. Several user preferences will allow a compete customization of the experience, with subscribers being able to have a full screen view or a movable pop out.

The service will be available on PC systems using Microsoft’s Windows OS and also on Apple’s Macs that use the Mac OS X platform.

Even though there certain similarities between Google’s offer and the services provided by Yahoo and Microsoft, for now, Gmail’s feature is the only one that allows free video conversations directly from its free e-mail application.

The new offer is expected to boost the company’s market share, as at this point Microsoft and Yahoo hold the first two sports, the first with 283 million users and the second with 274 million users, while Google is a distant third with 113 million users.

"I'm a big user of Gmail chat. Being able to switch from email to chat as needed, all within the same app, is really great for productivity," explained Justin Uberti, a Google software engineer, in one of his blog posts, adding that "people can only type so fast, and even with our new emoticons, there are still some things that just can't be expressed in a chat message."