Google Launches Google Talk

Software

Published: Wednesday 24th August, 2005 | Author: David Ross

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Worst Kept Secret this week....

This week it has been speculated that Google would launch Google Talk, and sure enough today they have - it is available over here.

More on this as we find it, but its another step towards Google domination of your PC.

Update

By Steve Kerrison

So Google makes a somewhat late, but rather hyped entry into both the instant messaging and VoIP scene. I woke up this morning to the news and scrambled to get my hands on it, only to find that a GMail account was required - Something I decided that I didn't need, until now.

Thanks to the various people who sent invites, within minutes I had a GMail account and Google Talk up and running. Alas, I have no headset to make use of the VoIP style services, nor any friends on my contact list (is that because they don't have Google Talk yet, or because I have no friends?)

So, having battled with my social issues I found somebody with which to try out the text based chatting. My first thoughts are that in its current state, Google Talk is very minimalist. Is that a bad thing? Well, I'm not seeing the appeal of Google Talk right now, but it could do well to not become as feature loaded and kid-oriented as the likes of MSN messenger.

Running on Jabber, Google Talk boast interoperability with various programs, but that doesn't include MSN or Yahoo!, which might be a problem, as people aren't going to want to move away from what they're used to.

I expect we'll see plenty more talk about Google Talk in the days to come.

HEXUS.community :: your right2reply

Posted by directhex - Wed 24th Aug 2005, 8:09pm

Quote: NuShuttle
I've been using Trillian for the past 3 years and to be honest can't see myself using anything else. Its a multi-client IM system (MSN,AIM, ICQ, Y!) and also has IRC. It accepts all sorts of useful plugins and has an SDK for those so inclined to write their own.

so follow the instructions on talk.google.com on using trillian as your jabber clientQuote

Posted by eloquence - Wed 28th Sep 2005, 4:07pm

I get the impression that currently Google Talk is a little behind the times. After all, if they supported connecting to existing users of lots of other networks, they'd have some kind of selling point over Yahoo and MSN.
Currently, though, it loses out in almost any comparison with the likes of MSN Messenger. After all, on the IM side you've got just text, not support for smilies.
On the voice side it's comparable to MSN, and way behind full some SIP-based VoIP services like Sipgate.co.uk (which gives you a free local UK telephone number for people to call you on as well as being able to receive calls from other users, plus has interoperability with other SIP networks), and behind the likes of Skype in conference calling, public telephone network calling, voicemail and other useful features.
Plus it doesn't have options like Video Conferencing as MSN does.

All in all, I can't help but wonder why anyone should be getting excited about it. It's using a proprietary voice protocol, rather than SIP or IAX, which are well-established open protocols, it has very limited functionality, and there's been a free product around for years which offers everything it can currently do and more... to think I saw the Metro newspaper saying experts were getting excited about it... why?Quote

Posted by alexsim2005 - Wed 28th Sep 2005, 7:58pm

I quite like Google Talk even though it is no-way near as good as MSN - Google's
'Gmail' is far better than 'Hotmail' though. :)Quote

Posted by eloquence - Fri 30th Sep 2005, 2:05pm

Agreed, Microsoft owns Google on the VoIP front, but Google owns Microsoft for free webmail... then again Gmail is relatively stripped down in its interface, so there are similarities in the different ways that the 2 companies have approached both problems, don't you think?Quote

Posted by 5lab - Fri 30th Sep 2005, 4:08pm

no, google doesnt 'own' microsoft on free webmail. their service may be better in your eyes, but if you look at the number of customers each company has, i think you'll see ms are a fair way aheadQuote