Google Talk

[Jessterw]

You might have heard the rumours, and they were true...

Google Talk

From the page:

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world. Google Talk offers you:

Choice: Get in touch how and when you want to–over email, IM or a call

Quality: Talk through your computer but hear your friends as if they were in the same room

Convenience: Your Gmail contacts are pre-loaded into Google Talk so inviting or talking to your friends is just a click away

Google Talk is in beta and requires a Gmail username and password.

Not sure whether to be thoroughly unimpressed or... erm... unimpressed.

[Jammrock]

You might have heard the rumours, and they were true...

Google Talk

From the page:

Not sure whether to be thoroughly unimpressed or... erm... unimpressed.

It's a modified Jabber client. Nothing overly fancy. Just another addition to the Google empire. I'll stick to Trillian and ICQ for the time being, though.

[Helevitia]

installed, add me: helevitia @ gmail.com

[Jessterw]

It's a modified Jabber client. Nothing overly fancy. Just another addition to the Google empire. I'll stick to Trillian and ICQ for the time being, though.

As I said, unimpressed.

[Helevitia]

I haven't used IM for about a year now. I have Xfire installed but it never gets used.

[UtwigMU]

Skype is the thing now.

[Nowhere]

And someone here was saying lately that Jabber is a 3rd clas player...
But seriously, this could make it big, especially if Google starts to offer transports to other IM networks (unlikelly IMHO...but once they'll open their server to other Jabber servers (probably not doing it before they'll resolve the potentiall problem of spam) you can always use external transports).
@Jammrock: why you wouldn't use it through Trillian? It's just Jabber...

Personally, I think it might compete succesfully...but right now it's just a kind of message to other big boys "we won't let you fvck your users anymore with closed standards, ads, not supporting 3rd party clients; we will do all of what you do...properly". Properly would mean also that you aren't locked from communicating with people from other networks...imagine if IM was like email...you really wouldn't be impressed then?

And it would be nice to see integration with Gmail...not only client accesible from the browser a'la Gmail interface, but also for example using archiving, searching and labelling mechanisms of Gmail for the archive of IM conversations...

Skype...it's good, it's succesfull...but they won't give you warranty of doing no evil And from what I understand the way Google punctures firewalls is more elegant...doesn't drain resources of not-NATed users...

[Mehen]

it IS still in beta, ive noticed a lot of review sites have been hard on it but wtf... its beta...


kbrajczuk@gmail.com

[VJ]

Not another client?
I currently have MSN, Jabber and ICQ (and IRC). I used to also have Yahoo!, but I don't use it anymore. Luckily, I can manage all of them with MirandaIM.
(and despite this, I rarely chat)


Jörg

[GuchiGuh]

I hated Trillian (back in the old days, never used it since)

Using MSN and Skype now.
MSN to share files and chatting, Skype for Uni talk/collaborated projects, talking to friends in Taiwan, etc.

[Gurm]

No reason Trillian can't connect to this with the Jabber client plugin. Maybe minor tweaking necessary thereto.

[Nowhere]

It's somehow nice...somehow better than Skype at VoIP. Yeah,generally Skype is great too, but when it's not...it's never ok or acceptable. It's horrible.
This OTOH seems to work at least good all the time...

[Mehen]

I love trillian, I just wish they were quicker about updating to keep up with the msn features as they add them

[Nowhere]

I dig up a little...

From Google Talk developer page:

We're committed to open communications standards, and want to offer Google Talk users and users of other service providers alike the flexibility to choose which clients, service providers, and platforms they use for their communication needs.

Sounds like Jabber transports...

Google Talk supports XMPP with the beta release. We plan to support SIP in a future release. Additionally, we will evaluate other protocols as appropriate, to continue to deliver on our commitment to open communications.

Read: if other bigboys won't show again that they're evil and we're good, by blocking our efforts to unite users?

Service choice is something you have with email and, for the most part, with your regular phone service today. This means that regardless of whom you choose as your email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, your school or ISP, etc), you can email anyone who is using another service provider. The same applies to phone service. You can call someone even if they do not use the same phone company as you do. This allows you to choose your service provider based on other more important factors, such as features, quality of service, and price, while still being able to talk to anyone you want.
Unfortunately, the same is not true with most popular IM and VOIP networks today. If the people you want to talk to are all on different IM/VOIP services, you need to sign up for an account on each service and connect to each service to talk to them.
We plan to partner with other willing service providers to enable federation of our services. This means that a user on one service can communicate with users on another service without needing to sign up for, or sign in with, each service.

"willing"...this part migh be hard...

However:

We plan to support open server-to-server federation. We do believe, however, that it is important to have the safeguards in place to ensure that we maintain a safe and reliable service that protects user privacy and blocks spam and other abuses. We are using the federation opportunity with EarthLink, Sipphone and other partners to develop a set of best practices by which all members of the federated network can work together to ensure that we protect our users while maximizing the reach of the network. We are also eager to hear from other people in the industry about how best to build a federation model that is open, scalable, and ensures best-in-class user experiences.

What else could this be than Jabber server to server communication? Which means: transports to other networks at will (yes, you can use transport on other server than the one on which you have main account). And other neaty bots etc....

And a reply from Google Talk developer to a direct question about opening to other Jabber servers:

Here are some reasons off of the top of my head why we might be moving slow here (There may be more reasons and some of these may not resonate with some of my fellow team members):
1) We haven't written the code on our server to do so yet. We've been spending our time getting ready to handle lots and lots of users.
2) We need to continue to develop comprehensive abuse/spam countermeasures. We want to make sure we have a handle on this on our own network before we introduce more variables.
3) We want to find a way to ensure a fully connected network. If we federate with both A and B, we also want A and B to federate with each other. We need to work to make this happen.

Personally I think that the ultimate destination is to come up with a system that is as distributed and decentralized as SMTP/email while not falling prey to the spam problems that SMTP has. We are going to test those waters first off by starting federation with a few partners and then moving on from there.

Especially the ending of it... Now, tell me, even you're sceptic about Google Talk...isn't this the holy grail of IM?

As I've said...right now: a messege to others "we won't let you fvck your users anymore"

[Nowhere]

http://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/jdev/2005-August/021792.html

http://www.eightypercent.net/Archive/2005/08/31.html#a253

Hmm...OK, this doesn't leave anyu doubt, Google will open up to other Jabber servers.
C'mon, won't that be good?