an ordinary blog — andr3.net

Everyone's talking about Google Talk, so i'll just join the bandwagon.

Last night, downloadsquad published a review with screenshots which sparkled a desperate search for the leaked binary over at digg (read it here, quite a long page. it's freezing up my computer) , so everyone knew it was only a matter of hours until Google finally released their IM/VoIP client.

Plus, some people Рincluding myself, thanks to Jọo for the heads up Рwere able to login into talk.google.com using the Jabber Protocol. Nothing new there, since we weren't seeing the app. But we were in, for just a while, then, all we got was a "405 Method Not Allowed".

Today, when i arrived to the Internet Land, lots of people were already speaking their minds about this. Here's a couple link I found interesting.

• Google Gets to Talking
  Google Blog – kind of an official announcement.
• Update on Google Talk
  Celso Martinho – A look under the hood.
• Google Talk?
  The Tao of Mac – Rui Carmo's take on this. I share his fear. Skype and Gizmo are far superior VoIP solutions, but with all the GHype... you never know.

And i'm sure there are more –but my thunderbird died, so no RSS for me. more on that later – but for now that's what people are saying.

I know Kottke must be surprised, because the only web integration i've seen is integration with GMail. Message notifier and Contact List support.

Opinions

My first reaction was... *shrug* ...it's just another IM client. Sure, it supports VoIP, but so does Skype and i don't use it. Sure, it has integration with Gmail, but i already have Gmail Notifier. Adding contacts straight off my Contacts List on Gmail? Cool, but not absolutely necessary. Webcam support? Not that I use it, but still, there isn't any. Extras, such as smileys and avatars? Nope.

Hmmmm... so as you can see it's a pretty lightweight IM client, with two powerful features built in, VoIP and openness that the XMPP protocol provides. People with other clients can contact GTalk's users. That's a good thing, but that doesn't solve the problem of Linux and Mac users not having a full fledged application.

If all you want is a very light messenger, then Google Talk is the Instant Messenger for you. If not, there is always the overlooked Yahoo! Messenger which pretty much kicks every IM client's ass. Also has voice and furthermore has webcam support, integration with personalized Radio Stations, games, etc. Pretty much everything you'll ever need, but people just don't adhere. I don't know why... My contact list on MSN is huge, while i have more fingers on my left hand than contacts on my Yahoo! contact list.

In my humble opinion, it's a good attempt, but not good enough. Is this the beginning of the end for Google's Earth Universe Domination plans?

Hey, I still love my GMail, GMaps, GNews, GAlerts, etc. (^^,)

While talking to João, he was trying to send me a file when we realized it doesn't even have File Transfers! Now, that's disappointing. I hope they're not expecting us to send files through GMail... :rolleyes:

The interface is pretty slick, though. Cool notifying system. Either through balloons on the systray or by flashing the window and showing the user's last message under the name.

The portuguese ISP/Portal Sapo wants to talk the Google Talk. [in portuguese]
Let's see if they'll walk the walk. :P
(via)

Will more messengers follow? Will GTalk unify the Instant Messaging World? Stay tuned...