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Google Instant Messenger Coming Really (or Not?)
bach37 writes "Google is rumored to launch its own instant messenger tomorrow." Other sources are reporting that talk.google.com is running jabber. Of course we've also had stories about all this being rumors
Didn't Google explicitely claim they were not making an IM service?
Why would they make one anyway? Doesn't really seem to fit with their current strategy unless they tie it into gmail somehow.
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It will have to tie into the new sidebar (update?) and will probably link to gmail accounts - which means that it could be BETA only? In any regard, I'm excited for it, pending its real.
mix_master_mike
vafrous
configured talk.google.com to redirect to www.google.com/talk. Its currently an empty page, but perhaps that means something.
Apparently this will feature VOIP as direct competition to Skype.
Any chances for a linux client that does video?
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I wonder if Google will monitor what is being chatted about and throw up relevant banner ads.
With google trying to dominate searching, news, usenet, email and now chat? At what point in time will they become cliche'?
Does the world need another IM client? Most geeks tend to use Jabber or Proteus (Mac) to consolidate all of their chat clients into one. Will a standalone really make much of a difference?
What happened to Google innovating and setting themselves apart? Suddenly they get an IPO and they feel they have to mimic the rest of the industry. If Google wants to be another Yahoo, MSN or AOL that's fine but I was really hoping for something new and different out there, not just a rehash of our current offerings with a cleaner UI. Clearly investors kill innovation.
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
Sounds Silly, but I wouldn't mind a "Google Internet Suite" type thing, that had maybe a client that incorprated google desktop, picasa, IM and gmail as well as search all in one. maybe have some desktopish options like archiving locally some gmail, linking between photos/emails/IM's and files, would definitly be powerful.
I for one, welcome our new google.com overlord.
No really, doesn't ANYONE see what google is doing? They own your searchs, they own our e-mail, they are trying to own all of our connections too - either through their "accelerator" service, or by sponsoring free wifi connections across the country. Google, wants to know what we are doing - they want the data so that they can target, model and predict our behavior. I'm not sure that it's such a great thing that one company have all of this information in one place, or it might be just me...
Okay, some time ago, Gmail changed form using your "Gmail account" to using your "Google account," so it's a safe bet us gmail'ers already have our Google IM id. However, how cool would it be if you could "save your chat history" or even a specific conversation to a "GIM Chats" label in your Gmail account, which you can then access and search like any other gmail "conversation?
The potential to integrate your IM conversations into a web based store has NOT been investigated, despite Yahoo and MSN both seemingly having the capability to do so.
It would seem logging and storing ALL IM chats would likely be a waste of disk space as most of it is generally disposable, but I've had several chats I would like to refer back to with important URLs and phone numbers, etc.
This is very true. I think the reason Google are doing so well is that they think like Apple: User versus Task.
gMail is good because its simple and does exactly what you expect it to, and nothing more. As much as giving almost unlimited inbox spaces was a marketing gimick it also got over the biggest, unnecessary headache of free email - storage space.
google.com works because they relised that a search engine should be just that, a search engine not a portal.
maps.google.com works because they took out the biggest headache of free map software: waiting for yet another huge bitmap to be pulled from a database. And improved the interface by letting you do exactly what you always wanted to do - drag the map so that you can see everything you want to see, not what the server decided you wanted to see.
Google Talk will work if it does what users want it do. Provide cross platform chat, voice and video without them having to convince their friends / relatives / co-workers to switch with them. With the simple interface we've come to expect from google. I don't expect it to do this in beta, but I would expect the google client to provide all of those services out of the box in a homogenous environment, and just chat in a hetrogenous environment.
Can't wait to find out!
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I notice a number of replies that show users are ready to charge off an use anything Google makes without thought to implications. We are talking about a company that has already indexed everything on the web, they want your email, they want you hard drive and now your instant messaging. Doesn't this scare anyone? Isn't there some serious reservation about privacy concerns for your own stuff? Worry that law enforcement might use it in some ugly way?
This is a company that has already blackballed a news organization that pointed out how easy digging out the dirt on its own executives is.
"Don't be evil" on a plaque is not enough protection against the most advanced data mining operation ever built. Regardless of intent, Google is what we always worried the feds would build and the online community keeps giving them more.
Mercury News has an interesting article about the new Google service. From the article:
This ``intelligent sidebar'' learns as it goes. It monitors Web searches and Internet surfing habits to deliver more relevant information and put it on a small screen that sits on the computer desktop.
Are we going to have another bout with Google about privacy concerns again?
Get your own free personal location tracker
It would be so sweet if they offered a Jabber server. That would help get Jabber services some more attention from mainstream users, and provide a much more reliable service than I've got from other servers. Especially if they have gateway support!
MSN has:
- reliability issues where it will go down for whole days or mornings at times- happening maybe every couple months for year. Google could use their high-availability knowledge to keep this lifeline alive
- integration to PSTN. If Google IM is always open, it's an easy transition to call family all around the world cheaply without the need to switch home phones and get a separate service (Skype for example).
- Fewer ads. Google would make its money on PSTN services, video conferences, features like '3-way calling' and 'conference calling' that need the network to merge several streams together or manage them. Google could make the ads smaller and less intrusive
- Fewer full-screen emoti-blips *hehe*
- file sharing, music sharing, resource sharing.
There is tons of untapped potential that M$ isn't doing. M$ is instead adding in full-screen emiti-blips (if I wanted a program to take over my whole screen when I'm working on something else, I would run a game.. It's happened before... typing in my credit card number and a MSN window takes focus... good thing I don't look at the keyboard when I type).
IM isn't just IM anymore. IM is about communication, information sharing, etc. All of Google's services are INFORMATION (search, maps, etc) or COMMUNICATION (gmail, talk) based- they're just adding more to the mix.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
So what's with the Talk.L.google.com ?
it seems that any calls to the "talk.google.com" resolve or redirect to a "talk.L.google.com" (lowercase l actually but it still translates that URL into another one).
I'd say this is imminent!
Look at the following:
C:> nslookup talk.l.google.com.
Server: dslrouter
Address: 192.168.1.1
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: talk.l.google.com
Addresses: 216.239.37.125, 64.233.167.125
C:> ping talk.google.com.
Pinging talk.l.google.com [216.239.37.125] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.239.37.125: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=243
Reply from 216.239.37.125: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=243
Reply from 216.239.37.125: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=243
Reply from 216.239.37.125: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=243
Ping statistics for 216.239.37.125:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 22ms, Average = 22ms
--- TO: "YA_Python_dev": And these are the only NETCAT results I was able to get? What parameters am I supposed to pass to NETCAT in order to get the results you specified ?
I echo'd this into a file echo.txt:
<stream:stream to='talk.google.com' xmlns='jabber:client' xmlns:stream='http://etherx.jabber.org/streams'>
And then I ran NETCAT v1.1 (on WinXP) with that file, like this:
C:> nc -L -vv talk.google.com 5222 echo.txt
DNS fwd/rev mismatch: talk.l.google.com != toolbar.google.com
Warning: inverse host lookup failed for 64.233.167.125: h_errno 11004: NO_DATA
local listen fuxored: INVAL
C:>
---- Interesting results!!!
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Google is insinuating itself into everything . The maps thing is pretty awesome (has a few kinks to work out, though), and Froogle will eventually trounce ebay and all of it's competitor-wannabes, even if it's slow getting started. Google Earth is truly mindblowing (even in its currently primitive state). And now, Google has a customizable 'personal' page. I would not be suprised to wake up some morning and discover that I now live in GoogleWorld. I am very much impressed that they are taking over without doing much in the way of advertising. If anything, they un-advertise (consider the fact that most of the folks posting here today did not realize that Google already has an IM service). They just release a feature, announce it to a few folks, and watch it spread like a virus.
Should I cheer them on, or be very afraid?
Here's a very interesting and well-done flash presentation on that subject.
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>> They grabbed a lot of hotmail users at the time when they launched gmail.
They've grabbed a lot of hype, that's for sure, but it did not translate into the actual users of the service. They're still below 5M users, while Hotmail has 100M+ users.
I do agree that Google is technically far superior to Hotmail, but as far as the number of actual users, they're not there yet, and at this point I don't know if they will be.
So Google's next acquisition is Opera. Maybe they can make that not suck now...
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