Why Google Talk matters
Posted in Technology Trends, Instant Messaging, Open Source, Commentary on August 24th, 2005
Today Google released Google Talk or GTalk for short. On the surface it would appear the it is another “me too” IM service without any significant features. In fact there are no interesting features to speak of, every one of it’s functions is already emulated better in another application. And a instant messenger client is only as good as the number of people using it. Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger beat Google Talk hands down on that.
What really is new about Google Talk is the fact that system is built on non-proprietary technology. While MSN, Yahoo, and AIM have been promising interoperability for years, they have been fighting to keep others off their network. And while the other messengers are clogged with ads and bloatware of features, GTalk is very simple and ad free. Also Google is inviting people to create clients for their Google Talk network. At the heart Google is running Jabber, an open source messaging server. And a number of IM clients already work with Jabber (and thus Google Talk). The Voice feature only works with the Google Talk client however.
This is seen as a way for Google to eventually move into full Voice over IP. Perhaps eventually even rivaling Skype.
Another good reason to welcome Google Talk is because when Google released GMail just over a year ago, it caused competitors to scramble to offer new features and services. Gone are the days of 10MB or 25MB of storage space for your email. You can thank Google for that. I can’t wait to see what Yahoo, MSN, and AIM will do to try to keep their users from fleeing to Google Talk. Perhaps they will take Google up on their offer and design their clients to work directly with Google Talk. Then we will finally have the interoperability among networks they have been promising for years.