Google Instant Messenger all Rumor

Jbravo writes "Search, blogging, maps, photos, email, and now a portal, Google has kept adding to their array of services. Is an instant messenger next for Google? Most recently Google has been said to be buying out a company called Meetroduction, LLC for their instant messenger Meetro. So, is it true? Is Google writing the check now? Well, after a chat with Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetroduction, the word is not right now. He called the whole story 'rumors.'"

Comments

Hello?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this called "Hello"? See here:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

Perhaps not the right approach for the market

[Sv-Manowar]

A lot of people already have IM networks that they're locked into because their friends/contacts are happy with that network and use it. In europe, its extremely common for people to have MSN, whilst the trend stateside seems to be more toward AIM (with MSN still significant there too). Google could do better by adopting something like XMPP/Jabber and either using a client that supports MSN/AIM/ICQ protocols or the server-side protocol translation that Jabber supports. A solid Google IM client based on XMPP might be just what the standard needs to build profile (whilst still allowing easy adoption through MSN/AIM compatibility)

Re:Perhaps not the right approach for the market

[Film11]

Agreed. It is simply too much hassle for one to change instant messaging networks like that. Changing my e-mail to GMail was bad enough, but telling everybody to add your new contact name, or worse, telling them to download a client so they can chat to you exclusively is just out of the question for me.

Re:Perhaps not the right approach for the market

[slashdotnickname]

In europe, its extremely common for people to have MSN, whilst the trend stateside seems to be more toward AIM (with MSN still significant there too).

or you can get an awesome open-source program like miranda which supports ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Netsend and tons more... all in a ~3meg memory footprint.

Too many already

[ilyaaohell]

Any company trying to roll out yet another instant messenger would be making a mistake. There are already three uber-popular, incompatible networks, not to mention the handful of smaller protocols. None of them really offer anything that the others don't have. Enough is enough.

Re:Too many already

[A beautiful mind]

and IRC from 1988 still beats them hands down.

Re:Too many already

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Depends on the job you're doing. No webcams, voicechat, direct ims(read: pictures inside convos, great for screenshots), or any other 'rich' features

IRC is extendable enough that you can add it, and a few clients have tried in the past(VIRC), but theyre just not standardized enough to rely on.
Tis a shame too If someone made a nice client that actually offered these features it'd save me and my friends a lot of time/effort having to switch between irc/aim depending on what is needed. I of course prefer irc when possible, but if I have a screenshot in my buffer, I'd rather click direct connect and right click -> paste picture than open ms paint, paste, save to disk, /dcc send nick (path to one-off screenshot), delete screenshot.

Ummm, they already have an IM client...

[todesengel]

Sure they don't advertise it, but Hello is a Google product...

"Rumours" is not a denial.

[Angostura]

.. It is, to use the old phrase "a non-denial denial".

If the guy had said "It's just rumours and there is absolutely no truth in it" that would be one thing. Just saying "it's a rumour" is the polite equivalent of "no comment".

I would imagine that Paul Bragiel and his company is quite enjoying the attention, so it's not in his interests to decisively quash these rumours, so he's left things a little ambiguous.

Brilliant move by google if they do that.

[elucido]

Because people search google, an IM would be genius. People who search for the same thing could meet each other through google IM. Almost like how technorati and other sites do it, google could take it one step further. Imagine the waste IM client combined with the google search engine.

Google buying its technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that MS has to take a lot of flack here for using its "unfair" financial advantage to buy out companies for their tech (drawing comparisons to a vampire) whereas it has been perfectly okay for Google to do the same.

Jabber?

[vidarlo]

If I where google, I'd go for a solution based on Jabber, as this allows

• Connectivity with other nets (MSN/AIM/Yahoo!)
• Connectivity with other jabber users
• Allows a p2p structure, which is cheap for google

The fact that the technology is there, might be impotrant for google, since it is a solution that just has to be deployed. Only problem might be how servers cope when they get 100K users, and how google will ensure connectivity with MSN et al without being sued for something...

Web-based client?

[helmetnerd]

It doesn't have to be their own IM network. I could see Google coming out with a web-based IM client for an existing protocol, in line with their web-based desktop philosophy. I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing a nice lightweight AJAX-stylee IM client built into my google account for when im not at home.

Re:The future is Google

[thrillseeker]

a GoogleOS thin-client is not far off. Why? The things that most people do don't require even a 10th the functionality of Windows

Actually, many people are slowly finding they need 10 times the functionality that the Windows variants provide. That's why other OS's exist and will continue to exist. Realize that functionality can be measured in many ways - freedom isn't free, for one thing - it requires work, whether in a democracy or an effort to have free (from control by others) software.

Google is lead by people smart enough to recognize that Microsoft views them as a threat, and so, by fiat, Microsoft is a threat to Google. A world in which Google did not have to worry about loss of search effort (and hence loss of eyeballs to the advertising revenue they capture) to Microsoft or to others is a world in which Google makes more money. A weaker Microsoft that would have to make decisions on concentrating its resources on its bread-and-butter Office (threatened by OpenOffice, for one), and on its OS, which is its starting point for its huge market capitalization, is a world in which Microsoft is not gaining revenue from search, or from IM, etc.

IMO, Google could do far worse than to figure out how to make Firefox even more useful and how to make Gaim even more useful, and how to make Sunbird a useful product, and how to make a free Exchange-like product that tied 'em all together, and acted as a chat server, and so on, and to give those things away, and encourage their use. Less Microsoft presence in those areas means a retrenched Microsoft not dipping into the search engine advertising revenue stream.

Re:The future is Google

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Actually, many people are slowly finding they need 10 times the functionality that the Windows variants provide.

No. geeks may be "slowly finding" this, but the "average user" is not. The "average user" has and continues to have a very well defined profile of things that they do. Games, image management, email, IM. The "average user" has no clue about much of what is discussed at Slashdot, and even less interest.