TMCnet News
Are You Ready to Google Talk?Are You Ready to Google Talk?
BY JOHANNE TORRES
TMCnet VoIP Minute Watch Columnist
Google announced the launch of an instant messenger (IM)/voice chatting client on Wednesday called Google Talk. This might just be what Google and Gmail users were waiting for to completely switch their communication services to those offered free by Google.
My co-worker sent me an invitation earlier this year so I could open a Gmail Web-based e-mail account. I really liked it a lot, and even planned to eventually ditch Hotmail and completely switch over to Gmail. There was something missing, though. I wanted to be able to receive those little popup notices in the corner of my screen so I would know when I got a new e-mail message, as I did with Hotmail. Then Gmail added a similar feature, the Gmail Notifier. Yet, I wanted something I was not getting from Gmail to completely close my Hotmail account; I wanted to be able to IM my friends who were not AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) users. With Google Talk I might as well switch over to Google completely for all my communication needs. Now, how will Google do with this new venture when it faces the competition such as Microsoft Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM and the newly launched Skype open IM and presence network? According to an Associated Press (AP) news report released this morning, "As a newcomer to messaging, Google could face an uphill battle. AOL's messaging program has about 41.6 million U.S. users, followed by Yahoo Messenger with 19.1 million and MSN Messenger with 14.1 million, according to ComScore Media Metrix's July report." I do think however that just because only an "elite group" of netizens are the ones that currently use Gmail, a service available by "invitation only," using Google Talk will become an "in" thing to do too in no time.
For users to actually switch IM clients, they must first convince all their buddies to make the switch as well. Why would they want to switch if they'll have none of their buddies to chat with otherwise? I currently use two different IM clients: AIM and MSN. I get to chat with my buddies in Puerto Rico through MSN, because you must pay a fee to use AIM in the island, unless you find someone to cheat the system by sending you the entire AIM client program through e-mail. (I hope AOL is not reading this). I use AIM to chat with most of my buddies here. I know this would be easier to do if all IM clients could cross-communicate one of these days, but until then, we must pick our battles…
Google will first be launching the client to be compatible with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The search giant expects to make the client Mac-compatible in the near future. According to AP's news report Google Talk will require users to "have an account with the company's free Gmail e-mail system."
Google Talk's voice chatting feature does not include PC to PSTN calling and it "requires that both the caller and recipient have speakers and a microphone hooked up to their computers. It does not currently offer an adapter to which regular phones can be connected," AP reported.
Don't forget to check out TMCnet's own Tom Keating's Google Talk review! In his blog, Keating shows live conversations that took place this morning, in addition to screenshots. During his first call, Keating found the sound quality to be excellent and latency to be minimal.
Keating described his experience: "I actually made a PSTN call and a Google Talk call and held the microphone up to the PSTN phone I was using. On the remote end I had the person turn his external speakers up so I could hear when my voice came through. I did some simple counting and almost immediately I could hear my voice come out of the remote speakers, into the remote callers phone handset, over the PSTN, and then to my phone handset. Pretty amazing how minimal the latency was considering it was round trip."
Keating found, however that users are not able to "right-click" contacts to immediately initiate a Google Talk voice call. The editor found annoying that he had to actually "start a chat session first" in order to make a call.
For more on his review, please check out his blog.
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit:
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