Jul 5, 2011 15:32 GMT  ·  By

One of the key components of Google+ is Hangouts, the video chat app built into the social network. It's based on some existing technology, from Gmail integration of Google Talk, but it is a complete, stand-alone product.

Right now, it looks like an appealing product, but it will need to scale, along with Google+, if it wants to become a Real Player in the video chat market.

One way Google will try to do this is by opening up the technology and the communication channels to third-parties, to make it interoperable with other products.

In essence, once Google manages to do this, other video chat app will be able to integrate Hangouts and web apps in general will be able to add video chat features.

Google Real-time Communications Tech Lead Justin Uberti took to his blog to answer some of the more technical questions users have had about Hangouts. One question asked whether the technology behind Hangouts will be opened up.

"We plan to publish the specifications needed to interoperate with Hangouts. At a high level, it's based on XMPP MUC (XEP-0045) and Jingle (XEP-0166/167), with some other enhancements needed to handle our architecture," Uberti answered.

Google has always had a culture open to third-party developers, to a point, and it tends to rely on open standards and technologies as often as it can.

While Hangouts requires a proprietary browser plugin to be installed, there is some early work on creating a standards-based implementation for real-time communications, WebRTC.

Until then, opening up the current tech will have to do. That said, having API access to the Hangouts chat could be a boon for Google and the myriad of small companies that could leverage the service.

Of course, all of this depends on whether Google will be able to scale Google+ to a level where it can compete with the more established players, like Skype which offers group video chat on a subscription basis.