Google Talk imminent

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

Originally Posted by LA Times

Google to Deliver Instant Messages
The service may start as early as Wednesday, sources say. The firm will face tough rivals.

By Chris Gaither, Times Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — Watchers of Google Inc. soon will have something new to chat about — and with.

Continuing its rapid expansion into new product categories, the Internet search giant plans to launch an instant messaging program called Google Talk as early as Wednesday, according to people familiar with the service.

The new service follows by just a few days the introduction of Google Sidebar, which pulls news stories, photographs, weather updates, stock quotes and other features onto a user's computer without opening a Web browser.

With all the new services, Google now competes with Internet portals such as Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online squarely on their turf, even as those companies encroach onto Google's with updated search engines.

Google has been playing catch-up with many products, such as e-mail, a personalized home page at Google.com and online maps. The goal is to get consumers to stay longer, rather than simply search for websites and then click away.

Compiling a list of buddies to chat with through instant messaging provides the kind of "stickiness" these companies covet.

"Like any big company, they've got a brand name, and they've got to keep extending it," said John Tinker, an analyst at Think Equity Partners who had not seen Google Talk.

"Because the reality is, there's not a whole lot of difference between their search [engine] and anyone else's."

According to a person who has seen the service, Google plans to let users chat using more than just their keyboards. Like similar programs from competitors, Google Talk also will let computer users with a headset have voice conversations with other computer users with headsets, this person said.

One source said Google intended to release the product Wednesday. Another source did not know when Google planned to release Google Talk, but said the company had been testing the service for at least a month.

A spokeswoman for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said early Monday that the company planned to release a new product this week. She declined later in the day to say whether that product was Google Talk.

Google faces an uphill battle in persuading people to change instant messaging programs. These services are useful only if friends and family members also use it, and competing services from AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft have been available for years.

AOL plans in September to introduce a new version of its popular AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, program that lets users send e-mail and text messages to mobile phones. In addition, customers of AOL's voice over Internet protocol service will be able use their AIM buddy lists to initiate calls to phones, not just computers. AIM leads the instant messaging pack, with 41.6 million U.S. users in July, according to research firm ComScore Media Metrix. Yahoo Messenger had 19.1 million users, and Microsoft's MSN Messenger had 14.1 million.

But Google has not shied away from introducing products to compete with already entrenched competitors. When it launched its search engine in 1998, the field was crowded with companies that Google and the Internet crash have since put out of business.

Even if Google Talk doesn't turn out to be revolutionary, Tinker said, "I don't think that matters."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...l=la-tot-promo

YAY now i can get rid of the piss that is MSN Messenger and finally bin my hotmail address that i never use except for msn...

... and according to that... it could be released today!

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/08...e-talk-review/

some screenshots/review here.

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

Google Talk launch sends clear message to rivals

Jack Schofield
Wednesday August 24, 2005
The Guardian

Google will today launch its long-awaited instant messaging and internet telephony service Google Talk, throwing down the gauntlet to rivals such as AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN.

"We hope to make a fairly big change to the way messaging is done," explained Google's director of product management, Georges Harik.

The initial test service, which does not yet carry any money-making advertisements, follows other new services from the American internet group, including its Gmail email and Google maps.

Article continues

These services are designed to help Google move from being merely a search engine to a web portal that competes with similar offerings from Yahoo! and MSN. Portals provide utilities such as mail and messaging that keep users on the site, as opposed to search, which sends them elsewhere.

Google's launch of an instant messaging service had been widely predicted, but two things make it unusual. First, it is based mainly on open standards, rather than being closed and proprietary. Second, the offering includes internet telephony using voice over internet protocol technology.

Internet telephony is already a common addition to instant messaging services, but Google Talk appears strong enough to compete with industry leader Skype.

Mr Harik said the company has licensed the same third-party technology or codec - which converts analogue signals such as speech into a digital format so it can be transmitted over the web - as Skype and aims to offer similar voice quality. However, while Skype's technology is proprietary, Google's is based on internet standards, as far as this is technically possible.

But Google Talk will only be available to people with existing Google Gmail accounts as the two will share address books. Initially it only works with the software Google has written for Microsoft Windows. Google is also taking a much more open approach to its instant messaging service than rivals. The market is constrained by the fact that the most popular services - MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and AOL's AIM and ICQ - generally do not allow users to send messages to those on rival services.

Google hopes to change that by basing its software on emerging internet standards and by making the program interface available to third-party software developers.

This will allow some existing instant messenger software to work with Google, so Google Talk users will not be forced to use Google's software to send messages.

Google shares closed up 2% at $279.58 yesterday on the Nasdaq exchange. They floated a year ago at $85.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/s...555086,00.html

based on open standards (using the same technology as skype, so you can expect the same quality).. the client isnt public yet but apparently people can already connect to:

Server: talk.google.com
Username: youremail@gmail.com
Password: yourpassword

with any Jabber-compatible client like Trillian, Gaim, Adium X, and iChat.

client should be available from either http://www.google.com/talk/ or http://talk.google.com but both are still unavailable atm.

**Sanj[UK]** · 24th August 2005

http://www.google.com/talk/

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

mmm.. its nice. simple, but very slick.

**salvadorescobar** · 24th August 2005

I wonder if it will intercommunicate with other open standards? It'd be nice to be able to phone someone on skype through the Google Talk interface. I don't want loads of different clients like many people have had to do with IM clients.

Ah...

Google tells us that SIP support is coming soon and are in talks with Skype, AOL, and Yahoo! concerning interoperability.

**Andy** · 24th August 2005

Superb, sure it can be hacked to add msn support as well maybe?

**Andy** · 24th August 2005

Originally Posted by marcode

mmm.. its nice. simple, but very slick.

Yeah, extremely simple, but thats the beauty of it.

No gay emoticons, wink buttons nudge crap, just plain and simple messaging :thumbs

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

Originally Posted by salvadorescobar

Google tells us that SIP support is coming soon and are in talks with Skype, AOL, and Yahoo! concerning interoperability.

not only that, its based on the jabber standard...

so it wins on a few fronts, the only client thats chat and voip interoperable. msn and skype are the 2 kinda main leaders for voip and IM atm and they are both proprietary... so as long as google keep things simple and not too bloated with the benefit of open standards.. should make a good alternative once they beef the client up with file transfers and emoticons and whatnot. with no fucking pish like winks/nudges/backgrounds and all the other drivel MS sees fit to pump messenger with.

quite impressed so far.. just need to get people to move... wish id had this when i was working, the windows can be made tiny while still totally functional..

**Epiphany** · 24th August 2005

Originally Posted by marcode

YAY now i can get rid of the piss that is MSN Messenger and finally bin my hotmail address that i never use except for msn...

You didnt need a hotmail account for msn. I never use one, i use an IC24 one.

It seems good but just about everyone i know uses msn so i'd have to run both of them all the time

**marvyboy** · 24th August 2005

tis nice....clean and simple....marv approves

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

Originally Posted by Epiphany

You didnt need a hotmail account for msn. I never use one, i use an IC24 one.

It seems good but just about everyone i know uses msn so i'd have to run both of them all the time

i know.. but when i signed up for it like 6 years ago, i think hotmail was the only account i had lol.. cant be arsed changing it now.

people keep talking about msn as if its some kind of rival... its not got decent voip included (and even when it does, it most probably wont be interoperable). they are not even competing on the same level (yet). voip=talk chat=msn

once google beef up the chat.. i can see quite a lot of people moving..

**Spennyboy** · 24th August 2005

Have just tested it and i like.

Its very simple to use and very simple looking.

:thumbs

**flypitcher** · 24th August 2005

Was it in betas form

**Tammer** · 24th August 2005

Just got this, and its about time there was a decent rival to msn. Only problem is making sure more people know about and actually use it.

jthomsonx@gmail.com if anybody's interested

**flypitcher** · 24th August 2005

Was it in beta form

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

Originally Posted by flypitcher

Was it in betas form

Originally Posted by flypitcher

Was it in beta form

wtf are you doing? and wtf are you talking about? thats not even a question.

**Nikki** · 24th August 2005

pretty good i reckon, i just need ppl to talk to to test it out

**marcode** · 24th August 2005

does anyone know where its storing these recent chat histories....?

ive turned that off for the moment till i can see where its saving em lol

also, because its based on an open protocol, it will probably soon be able to chat to all the other big networks such as msn yahoo and aim. i used to use jabber at work, and it had the option of signing into msn on it...

AOL, MSN and Yahoo try to ensure that their users talk to no others simply because they fear that opening up their networks will dilute their hold and reduce the amount of cash they can generate from all these people.

Although users can connect to other networks via more open clients, they typically lose some of the features, such as webcams and audio, that work on pure IM networks.

By contrast, Google Talk is based on an open technology called Jabber which was created to help different networks talk to each other.

Georges Harik, director of new products at Google, hinted that this was its aim when the Talk service was unveiled.

"We are going to try to be the first in the world to connect everyone to everyone," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4180182.stm