Skype has been breaking down barriers to communication for more than a decade by being at the forefront of real-time voice and video. In this time we’ve made Skype available on computers, mobile phones, TVs and even games consoles. Expanding to different platforms has helped us grow to over 2 billion daily minutes (that’s over 33 million hours) of voice and video calls. Today, we’ve got some exciting news. We’re starting to roll-out a brand new way of using Skype. Now, not only can Skype be used on just about any screen you lay your hands on, but you can also enjoy Skype on a browser. Welcome, Skype for Web (Beta).
First thought?
Great for Chromebooks.
They’re playing catch up with Google Hangouts in this space, but it could go either way still.
Basically yeah… ability to use in a browser means it can be used on “locked down” machines as well where they prevent installing software.
Well, if Skype can manage its bandwidth and call quality over the web as well as the software does, Google’d better get cracking on making Hangouts more reliable before this gets out of beta or theie won’t be any hangouts users left. Of all the current internet calling solutions, only Facebook has given me more dropped calls than Hangouts. So far Facetime and Skype have been the best.
They will both use the same underlying technology to get rid of the plugins: WebRTC
WebRTC is a combined IETF protocol and W3C Browser API for allowing real time peer to peer communication between browsers or other software.
It allows for real time voice, video and data. The video sources can be: camera or screen/desktop or window sharing.
And the data can be anything. So for example I believe people are using it for exchanging data between in-browser games (where is every player in the multiplayer game).
What is exciting to me is that WebRTC uses peer 2 peer encryption.
Unlike what for example Skype currently is. All Skype traffic now goes through Skype servers(which is actually out sourced to Akamai I believe). And because Microsoft changed the protocol and implementations all traffic can be decrypted by Microsoft.
Their is a WebRTC 1.0 API in Chrome and Firefox and Microsoft didn’t like the API. So their will now be a 1.1 API which IE team is currently implementing:
https://status.modern.ie/webrtcobjectrtcapi?term=webrtc
Google Hangouts among a lot of other software/services already support WebRTC.
Their are API’s/libraries for mobile apps and desktop applications that support the same protocol.
Their are VoIP soft PBX systems that support WebRTC. For example Asterisk supports is.
On the business side Ericsson and Cisco have been in this space for a long time and have been involved in the development of the protocols, they both support WebRTC.
Also Lync the Microsoft corporate offering will be called Skype for Business.
It’s all a commodity now.
Edited 2014-11-15 08:19 UTC
I hope this combined push will give a hard kick to Apple, and they’ll stat supporting open codecs like Opus at last (since Opus is part of WebRTC standard).
And next will be Daala which will be hopefully added to WebRTC when it will be released. And Apple won’t have an excuse not to support it.
Edited 2014-11-16 07:59 UTC
On the audio side WebRTC supports Opus and G.722. G.722 is the old telephone system. It is there for interoperability without re-encoding.
Opus was created by Xiph.org and the poeple at Skype before they were bought by Microsoft. And Opus is completely awesome, it is patent-free and state-of-the art, it was pretty much a no-brainer.
On the video side of WebRTC, it’s all H.264 right now and VP8 lost:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/10/30/video-interoperability-on-t…
http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/ciscos-openh264-now-part-of-fi…
http://www.openh264.org/
http://vimeo.com/79578794
But there will be a second and a third round.
H.265/VP9 will the second round. Which has already started. I think it will be a closer finish. But I’m afraid it won’t be close enough and H.265 will win again.
Unless Daala is ready soon enough in the second round. Most likely Daala will end up in the third round though.
Edited 2014-11-16 08:57 UTC
Oops, no body wins ?:
http://carlosaragon.postach.io/vp8-or-h-264-the-power-of-compromise
I mean users win !
Google Hangouts still requires a native plugin.
I haven’t tried it yet (I don’t have a webcam or microphone), but I believe Chrome works without plugins:
http://www.omgchrome.com/google-hangouts-chrome-plugin-free-2/
An almost win.
No, Chrome still uses their “native client” wrapper as far as I know, that’s why it’s Chrome only. Pure WebRTC solution wouldn’t require it.
See http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/06/plugin-free-google-hangout…
Yeah, seems that way.
I wonder for what part they need it.
It works perfectly in Chrome without any plugins. Firefox can’t be far behind but I have no idea if there are any specific WebRTC or other HTML5 features that Hangouts currently requires.
Even in Chrome it requires an extension for full functionality. First thing I get prompted when going to Hangouts is to install the extention if I’m on a copy of Chrome that doesn’t have it.
Microsoft’s Webapp ecosystem is getting ridiculously good. While I still use google for the most part, I snagged my outlook aliases for if I ever wanna jump ship.
Do they have a Google Voice alternative yet?
Suppose that depends on what you want from Google Voice. They have Skype in and out which I do use and really like, however they aren’t freev The advantage over Google Voice is that Skype is not restricted to the US so not only will it work outside of the states but you can call outside the states as well. You can also get phone call-in numbers in just about any country or area you can call. About the only thing Google Voice does that Skype doesn’t is transcribe your voicemales. If you compare them and free is not a requirement, Skype’s solution is far superior if you don’t want to be restricted to the states. Yes I know you can call Canada but you can’t link Google Voice to a Canadian phone number nor can you use it to make calls from within Canada. I know because I’ve tried. Skype on the other hand works flawlessly everywhere and, once the web version roles out, will be even better.
I think that was a lot of typing for nothing
I just want to SMS from my PC/tablet, as well as being able to use the same # across multiple phones.
It was Google that started the development of the WebRTC protocol and standard.
Microsoft Skype/Lync and IE team are implementing it now too.
Or as Wikipedia puts it:
“In May 2011, Google released an open source project for browser-based real-time communication known as WebRTC. This has been followed by ongoing work to standardise the relevant protocols in the IETF and browser APIs in the W3C.”
Edited 2014-11-15 08:15 UTC
Can you even create and use a microsoft account without a verified phone any more? I think i read a while back that temporary secondary email activation was going away and phone verification was to be forced on all user of microsoft services.
Too bad I can’t figure out how to get it. It’s not being offered to me.
Same here. Wanted to try it – to then be able to tell my sister how to use it on their chromebox – but it’s nowhere to be found.
Well, if it’s not there yet, then tell that. If it’s there, but not for everyone, tell that.
From the Skype blog entry…
We’re making Skype for Web available to small number of existing and new users to begin with, and gradually rolling out worldwide in the coming months – look out for an invite when you sign in to your Skype account on Skype.com.
Thank you for the info on that!
Apparently I am not one of those selected for the early roll out.
chrome laptop with skype
or
android laptop (eg slatebook14) with free “native” MS Office (mobile app admittedly)..
dunno, it’s a productivity argument.. ;Skype – I’d rather WhatsApp with Voip at this point. Just about
Given the choice between the two I’d rather a Chromebook, primarily because HP didn’t know what they were doing with the Slatebook and no other OEMs have tried this form factor yet. Maybe if someone with a clue how to design the Android UI for a laptop tried it it’d be different, but HP just slapped the tablet version of Android on there without consideration. E.g. they left the back/home/recent apps bar along the bottom, yet provided dedicated keys on the keyboard for these very functions. The whole experience is inconsistent, and it’s not helped by app developers that are just as unaware as HP themselves are (watch what happens when an app forces portrait orientation and you can’t turn the screen). Chromebooks at least work in the laptop form factor.
I’d love to see what a serious OEM could do with an Android laptop. It would require a lot of forethought but if done right would be one hell of a machine.
That’s actually some fair points. I was going to pick up a Slatebook – but when it’s only as an extra I think it makes sense to wait for a more polished Android laptop if at all now. I still like the idea of that OS in a clamshell “done right” though.
I’m interested in more WebRTC services that don’t require any native plugins. For instance for calling to phone lines.
Edited 2014-11-16 08:00 UTC
I’m kind of surprised that hasn’t happened yet.
At least I don’t know of a service.
For example Google already has Google Talk which can do outbound calls, right ?
Google is already heavily involved with WebRTC.
So why they never added, dialing phone numbers from gmail I don’t know.
My guess is, they think it’s a distraction which doesn’t get them any profit.
It is probably really hard to make a profit on people making phone calls.
There are however a lot of VoIP-providers. And there are a bunch of WebRTC-supporting open source VoIP solutions. And a bunch of enterprise VoIP-gateway products support WebRTC.
It should be simple to put 2 and 2 together.
There are even backend API providers that can help you build such applications with very little effort I believe.
Well, Google offers phone calling in Google Talk and Hangouts. Except that it’s not WebRTC based and uses native plugin. I used it in the past, but lately it fails miserably on Linux. So I’m waiting for some service that just works and uses pure WebRTC.
From what I read, Chromebooks are not currently supported except for Skype IM.
But, I’ll keep watching for it to work someday.
The only things I miss on my Chromebook is access to Skype, and my iTunes library.
> Skype and our friends at Internet Explorer are starting to implement the technology to make Real-Time Communications (RTC) on the web a reality, but for now, before your first call, you’ll need to install a small plug-in to start your conversation.
Great…
I am a Linux user. Will SkypeWeb run in Firefox or Chromium on Linux? Microsoft say they love Linux and open source now, do they? OK, let’s see if these are just words or more than that : will SkypeWeb run on Linux?
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Edited 2014-11-17 04:07 UTC