Google, Skype and the Future of IM

Matt Veenstra sent in a nice little piece of rumor mongering about how Google's new Talk/Jabber/IM thing is just a stepping stone, but it's really just a foreshadowing of their future buyout of Skype. Worth some thought anyway.

Comments

Re:Another Google buyout?

[jasongetsdown]

from the google talk faq: "12. Can you tell me more about Google Talk and privacy?

Google respects and protects the privacy of individuals that use our services. Google Talk gives you control over whom you talk with, whom you block, and who can see your online status. Additionally, Google only requires minimal personal information--just your name and Gmail address--for you to use Google Talk.

Google Talk currently does not encrypt chats or calls. But we are working hard to make many improvements to Google Talk while it is in beta, and we plan to fully support encryption of chats and calls before our official release.

When you use Google Talk, you can choose to have your IM chats stored locally on your own computer so that you have a chat history. Google does not collect the content of instant message chats or voice conversations. As with all major IM services, Google Talk will collect certain log information created in the course of a conversation. This information is for Google's internal use only, to maintain statistics on usage and to improve our service and the user experience. We do not permanently store any personally-identifying information in the Google Talk logs. And we do not log any of the content of your chats or calls."

Good enough for you?

Also notable is that this is the first time I can think of that they've actually alluded to the Official Release of one of their perpetual betas.