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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.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
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.
Yet Another Instant Messanger.
Just what we need!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I don't see what Google has to gain in doing this, surely it would be an incredible uphill battle for an IM released by them to capture any significant portion of the market against the established clients running over MSN's and AIM's protocols.
They would have to come up with something pretty interesting to cause enough buzz to get people to switch I think.
Well, tomorrow will tell by the looks of things, one way or the other.
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Any chances for a linux client that does video?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
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'?
If this rumor is true, and I run my own Jabber server, can my users connect through my server into Google's users? Are directory and filesharing services mergeable, to appear to my users like I'm part of Google (authentication, etc)? Which IM gateway that gets my users onto the most IM networks, with the largest aggregate user reach?
--
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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
And I just run into somebody on the street proclaiming that the world might fall to pieces tomorrow (actually claiming that the world will end tomorrow, and then asking for a donation. I failed to see the short term use of that donation, so I just wished him luck).
Anyway: Come back tomorrow and see if google really launched a IM. And if they do, then please not in google earth style or any other google windows only products. If they really want to play along with the big boys, they should make it crossplatform. It is what they owe their current status to!
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They grabbed a lot of hotmail users at the time when they launched gmail. How is this any different? Microsoft grabbed tons of MSN Messenger users making ICQ's market share take a HUGE dive at that point (almost everyone I know switched over for example).
Why would they have nothing to gain and why would it be difficult? They offer something better (faster connections, less intrusive ads [since it would be supported by premium VoIP services], easier than remembering a number, more video features, more voice features, linking with cell phones, VoIP, more games, etc) and people will move to it. Better yet, support other messenger services (a-la Trillian... they can do this with Jabber for example) and why would anyone use MSN? There isn't really a barrier to entry. One geek will drag over their friends, and repeat.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
This seems to be a throwback to the 1990's portal strategy of "stickiness." That is, trying to keep users in the offered services as long as possible in order to market to them. I would be more inclined to believe in a Google messaging system if it was designed around the concepts of search. Google can already offer search via any IM service using a bot to return results just as they do via SMS. Google Desktop can search IM logs from any client that saves logs in a text file. So what's the advantage of yet another IM service? Sure it might raise the profile of Jabber but I don't see that much helping the situation. Unless they are going to unveil some form of speech archiving and searching, I don't see what use this will be.
I doubt you're going to get many people to switch from AIM.
The amount of users on AIM is the main pull to get it... If you want to talk to someone, most likely their IM program of choice is AIM. You're not going to switch, unless everyone you talk to switches as well... and I don't sense a mass exodus coming anytime soon.
Go to a college campus, and nearly everyone has a screen name on AIM... I know competition is good, but unless all these IM programs can talk amongst each other, I don't see anything overtaking AIM anytime soon.
I agree. Google has really shown what you can do when you put the user first, especially with Google maps. Back when Mapquest was king, I hated looking directions up online and would rather get out an atlas, but Google has really made navigating maps online a breeze. Hopefully they bring their ease-of-use to the IM world.
I would accept an instant messenger protocol from them, except I think they're still missing a grammar checker.
"In fact, if I were Google, I would be working on Google Browser. Then they could deliver ads whenever someone was browsing the Internet!"
You mean Opera? That's what it does. Serves Google ads as soon as you open the browser, and then for each page you visit.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
(Assuming again that this is truly going to be a 'Google IM' and it's not just some bizarro misunderstanding,) talk.google.com is running Jabber. If they're going to launch the service tomorrow, that's what they're going to launch with. It's not like they're just running Jabber today and then tomorrow they're going to switch it all up on us with some crazy proprietary protocol.
And... since Jabber is 'an open and published IM standard'... what have you got to worry about?
Also, i don't know a whole ton about Jabber or how Google works internally, and i'm not suggesting that it's true or false, but what are the chances that maybe talk.google.com is just like a corporate Jabber server? Like for Google employees to talk to each other?
This time is not a rumor!
Try it for yourself. Send a string like:
to talk.google.com, port 5222. It will respond with a valid RFC 3920 (Jabber) stream!
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http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/050823/markets_stocks_befo rethebell.html?.v=1
Google Inc. (GOOG) rose nearly 1 percent before the bell on Tuesday after the Los Angeles Times reported the Web search company will launch its own instant messaging system
Shares of Google rose $2.54 to $276.55 on the Inet electronic brokerage system, from a $2.74.01 close on Nasdaq.
Boy oh Boy, that's almost $1 BN ($0.767 BN to be exact) jump in market cap. Tin foil hats and Conspiracy theorists, jump right in.
I doubt many of my friends would go through the hassle of switching even if Google Talk turns out to be far superior; an IM program is little use without people to talk to.
"Because the reality is, there's not a whole lot of difference between their search [engine] and anyone else's." :)
We don't need Google to be different then the other search engines, as long as it returns the most relevant results
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
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.
GAIM was a rather large recipient in the summer of code stuff google did this summer.
I already use gaim on windows, because I was fed up with having aim, yahoo, and MSN, Just to talk to a few people on each. They all baloon to 20+ MB of ram each while running. Gaim never reaches 20 while providing me with the same functionality.
The only problem is the file transfer and A/V chat features. When I want to use those I fire up the official client.
Here is hoping that google just throws some programmers at gaim and then rebrands it.
Hopefully they bring their ease-of-use to the IM world.
What is so difficult right now? Double click on who you want to chat to, and then type and hit enter? Pretty scary stuff there....
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...
If this makes Jabber more popular, i'm all for it. I dream of a world with an unified, standart and open IM system...
Jabber has server modules that connect you to most major networks. That's the real push for Jabber is that it bridges the gap. Until M$ blocks Google's IPs (heh), Google could technically put a bridge in there and make connections to Microsoft's servers for every user.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
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!
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
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?
There's actually a few public Jabber services already that have installed Jabber's MSN transport. If Google engineers are as good as they seem, they'll have no trouble at all to let you talk to your MSN friends.
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
No probably not. The difficulty of associating a particular user to ip traffic is extremely difficult and in some cases impossible.
Google can easily figure out who you are and what you are doing, what you are interested in, how you behave, and who you communicate with. Any service with google.com as the domain will allow them to cookie you - and provide visibilty of your identity across other google services, allowing them to easily aggregate your activities.
Really the reason that I bring this up is that people seem to *love* Google. I mean at $277/share i think it speaks for itself. There are a number of other companies who if they were doing such things, most people would take issue, and have in the past. Double click immediately comes to mind. Maybe people will start to figure it out when the love affair ends.
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!
I think people would be pretty alarmed if as soon as they started talking about pizza on the telephone, an advertisement for a local pizza place appeared on the LCD screen of their phone base without their asking. In that context, it sounds downright creepy. There may be a legal distinction between phones and IM services, but I think most people would say there's no material moral difference.
This seems like a slippery slope. It seems a short step from offering ads based on what people are saying to taking on what people are saying (and reporting those stats to third parties). Certainly the use of "usage stats" are critical to Google's interface to purchasing an AdWords campaign.
And what if the "things people are talking about" are collected with the intent of not being individually identifiable, but in some cases do turn out to be identifiable. This problem has come up with zip codes. People sometimes track them thinking they are anonymous. But some 9-digit zips identify a particular street address, and if only one person lives there, saying that "all people in this zip code have the following buying habits" is the same as naming the person who lives there and saying he has those buying habits if the name can be accessed by reverse lookup. In the case of income surveys by zipcode, this can expose income for certain individuals and, for example, injure their bargaining position when searching for a job or selling a house.
.. and if that's not enough to make you nervous, there's always the full text search issue ... ;)
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I agree, another damn IM. Thankfully there's Trillian. Now I'd just like Trillian to gobble up XFire's gaming support so I can rid myself of that very useful -- but horrible programmed (cpu intensive, crashes, leaks) piece of shit.
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!
Their service may be treated as one if you have really dirty friends though. ;-)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
My favourite: "Gabber"
More boring possibilities:
Google Chat
Google Messenger
Gtalk
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Most students I know are more likely to be on Yahoo, which easily outstrips AIM in terms of features, but the point stands.
Most people I know don't switch IM clients. You add them to the ones you already use. So AIM has the largest user base because they were first. I guess the question is, how many IM clients is too many, and will a client like Trillian obviate the intended utility of their product?
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Google Maps uses the .kml extension (.kmz if compressed), where KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language, and XML format documented here
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Google is launching an ahjfgdf service tomorrow.
there's more than one way to do me.
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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Google Instant Messenger Coming Really (or Not?)
... or "Not?"
So, is it "Really Coming"
Tomorrow: Microsoft Linux Definitely Confirmed (Possibly?)
rooooar
Trillin Basic, as my understanding goes, isn't able to utilize this plugin...only those who shelled out 29.95 USD for Trillian Pro get to connect to Jabber services. I do wish that they made it available to the basic users as well, seeing as how having a Pro account is no longer worth it (no new skins for 3.x, no really decent plugins, etc)...oh well.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050823.wgoogletalk0823/BNStory/Business/
" "It means other people and developers will be able to add value to our network by being able to add this to computer games, productivity applications and anywhere else they want," said Georges Harik, director of product management at Google. The new Google program features a basic user interface with few graphics, much like the main Google search site. It does not spawn pop-up windows or display ads like America Online's Instant Messenger. "We'll have an uncluttered interface that allows you to search over your contacts pretty easily," Mr. Harik said. "It just stays out of your way unless you want to connect to someone." Google Talk, which is being released in a beta test version, works only on PCs running Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Eventually, the company plans to release a version for Apple's Mac OS X. Google Talk also requires users to have an account with the company's free Gmail e-mail system. Gmail previously was available only to those invited by a current account holder, but now Google is opening up registration to anyone in the United States. And unlike Internet phone services such as Vonage and Skype, Google's voice service does not support calls to the regular telephone system. Mr. Harik also made clear that Google has no intention of trying to become a popular bridge to the other major instant-messaging providers. "We're not going to do anything like force other networks to interoperate with us," he said. "We're not going to arbitrarily break into their protocols." "
really 867993
Karma schkarma
>> 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.