In a world where seeing is believing, video chat is now one of the most popular gifts the Internet has ever provided. Google, the most popular search engine on the market today, wanted to keep up with its users’ needs, and therefore introduced voice and video chat features to its Gmail service.

Now, Gmail users are just a small browser plug-in away from being able to chat in high-quality video within their email account. And if you don’t have a webcam, but still want to enjoy chatting within Gmail and without switching to another application, Gmail also allows users to only use the voice chat.

Google explained its choice of making the new services possible by the growing popularity of video communications. The need for a video chat is also supported by the newest types of laptops that usually come with an integrated webcam, but also by the fact that businesses are now “international,” spreading on different continents and time zones. Video chat ultimately links it all together, and having one integrated in your email account is very convenient.

“Google is offering browser-based voice and video chat as a natural extension to webmail and instant messaging, allowing people to choose how they want to communicate at each moment – by email, instant message, voice, or video,” the company said.

Furthermore, Google said they’ve created the voice and video chat feature in the spirit of open communications, allowing third-party applications and networks to choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

Once more, Google opened up the doors to a new service for users, and most importantly, added yet another great feature to Gmail, in addition to other experiments conducted by Gmail Labs in its few months of activity.

For example, at the end of last month, Gmail Labs came up with the idea of allowing users to add gadgets to Gmail, such as Calendar and Docs. According to the company, this is just the beginning, and more features will be added in time. The most important thing for now is to expand the functionality of the “dull” email service with features people would use on a daily basis, without forcing them to switch between tons of applications.

To even show how much Gmail cares about the emails you send (that usually embarrass you in ways you couldn’t have imagined when you sent them… because you were probably too drunk for that), Gmail Labs came up with Mail Goggles, a feature that checks to see if you’re in the right state of mind when trying to send that late night email.

Gmail as we see it today is much more colorful (with its new emoticons) and offers more productivity than ever, by gathering multiple functions in one application.