Giggity-Giggity-Google
Google talk was leaked on the internet around 7pm, just a little ahead of it's scheduled release date of August 24th (Google offered it publicly a few hours later). Google talk is an instant messaging program released by the almighty Google corp. (duh). In runs on the open protocol called Jabber, and supports both text IM's and voice chat. While AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, etc., can not be used as of yet in the official version, based on the way the Jabber protocol works, this should be quite able to integrate all your IM programs. Google is also in official talks with these companies regarding official interopability, however, I don't see what's to stop someone from adding another Jabber server and connecting to these... but I don't want to get too technical.
So what's the big deal? Well a couple things, the first being that GT integrates your email and IM in one interface, which, as I imagine is Google's bet, will drive more users to GMail, which in turn would drive up overall contextual AdSense revenue displayed alongside GMail messages. There are no advertisements in Google talk. When you first load up GT ( a quick download at just under 1 meg, by the way), your contact list is blank to begin with. Then, like it calls up your GMail account (which is also your login info) and imports contacts from there. Also, when you instant message a new contact in the program, they are automatically inserted into your contact list at GMail. It also takes the liberty of unistalling the GMail Notifier if you have it, as there is now no need for it.
The other thing that is going to make this attractive to tech-savy folks is it's VoiP capability (voice chat). I would not be suprised if this gives Skype a run for it's money once (or if) Google talk gains massive popularity. Why? I have never heard such crystal clear sound when I was chatting with my roommate who is at home in Lima. I wonder if the VoiP will be embraced or not, simply because it feels weird to talk to your computer the first few times.
However, Google is going to have to step it up very quickly if it is going to win over users from AIM, Yahoo, and MSN (ICQ is owned by AIM). The program could be the greatest thing in the world (it is isnt), but the program is still useless if no one else adopts it. If Google talk is going to be taken seriously, it is going to have to work with the big three (or at the least, AIM, the most popular IM program in the States). And the sonner, the better.
That being said, Google talk certainly has the potential to do so with it's massive integration into GMail (and Google Desktop's 2.0 release yeaterday), Google is bit by bit trying (and somewhat succeeding) at taking over many a user's computer.
An interesting sidenote, Google's company philosophy (found here) states their number two philosohpy is
Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat.
Guess they might need to amend that, huh?
EDIT: A few hours after I posted this, Google's philosophy changed. It now reads
Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better.
Google talk can be downloaded at http://talk.google.com
