Google announced new Gmail features like Group chat and emoticons in Gmail chat. With these features now you can invite multiple contacts for chat at the same time. This will allow chat with multiple friends in single window. There is no limit to number of people you can chat and each participant can invite other friend for chat in same group.

  The other interesting feature is new emoticons. You  have now some cool list of emoticons right in your gmail chat window. The older key combination emoticons will still work. For all the key combinations for specific emoticons you can visit this Google page.

The similar features are already available in Yahoo IM. So Google is now trying to accumulate all good features step by step in Gmail.

All these features are available for new Gmail users only. Google is rolling out these features step by step to all previous Gmail users. Also this group chat and emoticons are available while you are chatting through Gmail only and not available in GTalk yet.

Visit what’s new on Gmail for other cool interesting Gmail features.