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  Google Talk 1.0 Beta Preview

  Aalaap Ghag, Aug 28, 2005 1010 hrs IST

  Can you use this to talk to your MSN Messenger or Yahoo! buddies? Soon...

  

Page 1 - No Frills Page 2 - Featherweight Page 3 - Coming Soon

If you didn't see this coming, you're obviously not too technologically inclined. And if that's so, I wonder how you landed up here to read this! Google, after launching (and pretty much taking over) all services of the web like search, email, discussion groups, image management, advertising options, etc., has now launched an instant messenger - Google Talk.

Sometimes I wonder what took them so long, but I'm glad that they didn't just buy some sidelined instant messenger service and re-brand it, which seems to be the trend these days with all the biggies like Microsoft, Yahoo and even Google themselves. But Google Talk isn't entirely original in that sense. It doesn't use its own protocol like MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger, but it uses the open-source Jabber/XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) as the base. This means that you instantly have a choice of several third-party clients to use with GT if you don't like the original, like GAIM, Miranda and even iChat that comes with OS X.

Now why would you not like the original client? To answer that in two words: it's primitive. It's the most basic instant messenger in today's cut-throat IM world that's dominated by a flurry of animated smileys, skins, flash animations, backgrounds, video chat, pictures and blog integration. Google Talk offers none of these features in its client. But go back a few years and remember how your typical search engine homepage used to be - littered with all the information in the world that no one really was so keen on having. Google came in and put just one text box and two buttons, and now everyone else is trying to cut down on their content so their sites become faster and more focused. The setup download is a mere 899KB, compared to the 8.91MB that the new MSN Messenger 7.5 download is.

Google has its own Passport-style login that is used for all Google services, including Gmail and now Google Talk. Anyone with a Gmail account (and I know that includes most of you) can instantly sign into Google Talk without having to create a new account. The absence of any registration form and the large user base of Gmail is likely to drive the usage of Google Talk much higher than that of any other competing new entrant in the instant messaging field, as people figure out that it doesn't hurt to give Google Talk a try.

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