Google’s making progress towards taking over the world. In a big day of new offerings, the Internet God announced yesterday the ability for users to video chat and check on the status of the flu outbreak. Odd combination, but useful nevertheless.
 

As such, Skype and iChat should probably start getting nervous. With Google video chat, they may just become obsolete. It’s nothing against their services, but Google is not a force to be reckoned with. The new video chat feature allows anyone with a web cam to talk for free simply by selecting “start video chat” while in a Gmail chat window.
 

On a strange, but somehow related note, Google also launched Google Flu Trends yesterday with the help of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The idea developed after Google discovered that there is a relationship between the frequency of search queries about the flu and the number of people who have flu-like symptoms in a specific area. The high tech flu tracking system can be automatically updated and thus provide earlier warnings of an influenza outbreak.
 

Face-to-face chats and flu tracking? Is there anything Google can’t do?