Google Messenger this Wednesday?
August 22nd, 2005
I feel a strange disturbance. Like a million voices crying out. The collective seems to be regenerating; MSN Messenger seems to be down at the moment. Can anyone get on?:)
Back on topic, the New York Times reports that Google is launching a new communications tool which is “a clear step beyond the company’s search-related business focus”.
Google executives say they plan to unveil on Wednesday a “communications tool” that is potentially a clear step beyond the company’s search-related business focus.
While executives would not disclose what the new software tool might be, Google has long been expected to introduce an instant messaging service to compete with services offered by America Online, Yahoo and MSN from Microsoft.
There’s been speculation about Google IM for a long long time and it makes a lot of sense since they have Blogger, Gmail, and Orkut. I also can’t think of many communication tools which can be seen a clear step beyond the search focus. Remember that Google already own an IM client called ‘Hello’. It would make sense to upgrade this into more of a mainstream messaging service. MSN Messenger certainly has done a lot of good for Microsoft - there is cross promotion for the MSN Portal, MSN Search, MSN Music, etc. As Google rapidly expands into new areas, a IM would be a perfect soapbox to promote these new services.
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I wouldn’t actually use a Google IM client if they did bring one out. I use MSN as my main (out of 3) IM clients and use it socially, for business and for my job. Even if they integrate all their systems into this IM (Gmail, Sidebar, Google, Blogger) then I still wouldn’t use it. Don’t get me wrong, I’d give it a go - but it’d only be temporary.
I think that Google are becoming a bit like Microsoft, only a little but more fun. I think they should be happy with what they’ve got and leave any other projects in the background to be discovered eventually and therefore they’re more exciting. Google for President!
I think one thing which is true is that innovation at Google is slowing down. Google Maps for example was hardly innovative. Other sites had already had satellite maps for a while and the XmlHttpRequest-enhanced interface was cool but other sites had already done it in Flash. Only web developers would care that it was written in a different way and as a user I would have found Google’s Javascript interface much more frustrating then using a Flash one which could have panning and when you zoom in it shows the lower resolution image downloaded earlier before showing the new one.
Google’s personalized homepage is not great. It works but I would never use it as a homepage. Microsoft had Start.com before. GMail mainly made the headlines only because it had such a large amount of storage. Google Desktop was a product which was way behind it’s rivals and doesn’t fit in well with the workflow. Orkut, to be honest, is another great idea but isn’t at the point where it’s something you want to use.
Google knows how to hype products but their products really aren’t anything new. Which makes it more likely they would launch something like an IM app. I’ll continue using MSN too until I can find a open protocol distributed alternative. I certainly wouldn’t want to use MSN as a platform to talk to customers because the service is reliant on the uptime of MSN. Jabber is great but unfortunately there’s very few people using it. Perhaps a big name such as Google could give Jabber a lot of needed PR and give it the kick start it needs
Speaking of open protocals, it’s not IM but I recently tried Gizmo Project as an alternative to skype and so far I’m hooked. It’s at least as good.
As far as IM goes I do like to be able to access more than one service so I use gaim.
If there’s a google IM and it’s a proprietary protocall then then I’d be unlikely to use it unless like MSN and AIM, many contacts using it forces my hand.
A google jabber server?
Wow, pretty cool. I suspect it may be a chat server for employees but certainly that’s some pretty good indication of a Jabber-based IM service. If this thing gets released tommorow, and Google don’t tamper with anything to the point where it isn’t compatible with other clients then this will be the biggest step forward in instant messaging for a very very long time.
It also seems like http://talk.google.com is redirecting to http://www.google.com/talk/ which would indicate it’s going to be a public service and not an internal one. Seems like googletalk.com and gtalk.com are taken by other people though.
According to Neowin: