• Tech Crunch, Friday, April 29, 2011 12:29 PM

 Giving consumers one less reason to buy Apple, Google is rolling out an update to Nexus S devices that adds voice and video chat to Google Talk, which is included as part of the core set of Google apps that come pre-installed on many Android devices. As TechCrunch notes, the "functionality has never been included with stock builds of Android ... the way Apple's FaceTime has been integrated into iOS."

 "For Android users who have developed an inferiority complex watching their iPhone-wielding comrades indulging in the joys of video chatting -- your time has come," announced mocoNews. "Google's Android mobile operating system has been playing catch-up to Apple's iPhone iOS from the get go," Softpedia writes. "It is closing the gap and Android fans will tell you there's plenty about their phones that's better than the iPhone, but there's still room for improvement."

"The offering ... sounds like it will be more compelling than Apple's FaceTime but less useful than independent mobile video chat apps like Tango," writes ReadWriteWeb. "But how long will we have to wait until Android users can video call iPhone owners without any more thought than voice calls require today?"

Indeed, "One main obstacle [to broad video chat adoption] is the lack of interoperability, which doesn't seem to be getting any better with this product launch," mocoNews adds. "When Apple first showed off FaceTime last year, it promised it would make the system an open standard -- but so far, that hasn't come to pass." All the same, as Lifehacker notes: "While we've always liked apps like the mobile Fring or cross-platform Skype on Android, it's pretty exciting to see an official offering from Google."

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