Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google, Skype and the Future of IM

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the nothing-like-a-little-theory dept.

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.

9 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. "News" implies some basis in fact... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slashdot: Speculation for Half-wits.
    Honestly, is a story based at least marginally on fact too much to ask? A entire article without one scrap of evidence to back it up...in fact, in under thirty seconds I was able to find two articles that would seem to contradict this assertion.

    How exactly did this make it onto Slashdot?

    Google, Skype and the Future of IM

    Oh, I see...
    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    1. Re:"News" implies some basis in fact... by PDXNerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Slashdot: Rumors for nerds, something to impress your friends with!

      Seriously though, remember the original Google Talk rumors and how they were debunked? Now this? What about the Google Earth rumors? What about a Google Browser (which hasn't happened, but the newest Google Desktop is mighty close...)

      Also - the previous story had to do with viral marketing and Serenity - now this comes along. Perhaps Google is doing a bit of viral marketing of their own? I wonder how many "Google Rumors" have been posted here, debunked here, and then later, after release, had an article here saying "It's true!!!!"

    2. Re:"News" implies some basis in fact... by Dr.+Molf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow. His evidence is startling: #1/ Buying Skype would cost a lot of money #2/ Google just raised a lot of money QED. Based on these facts, I think that Google is going to buy Chuck E Cheese (NYSE: CEC). I submit as evidence the fact that Google is not yet in the Children's Entertainment Pizza n' Token business and certainly being able to put online ads on the walls around a Chuck E Cheese would be very lucrative. Children are highly impressionable and Google has lots of money. QED. At the very least, any baseless opinion article should be sent in by at least a different person than the actual author. Of course you believe your own made-up bull. SIGH.

      --
      indeed..
  2. Google vs. Skype by hkmwbz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Google and Skype could turn out to be competitors as well. Do we really want Google to buy up potential competitors?

    But I guess history shows that the Skype creators could sell their creation to set out for something else. That's what they did with Kazaa anyway.

    --
    Clever signature text goes here.
  3. Why would they buyout Skype? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They already have VoIP built into their client and a huge marketing machine, including millions of viral marketing droids, working in their favor.

    1. Re:Why would they buyout Skype? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From what I have read, the Skype system works by using non-NAT'd people as relays for conversations where both end-points are NAT'd. This, unfortunately, is placing a lot of strain on their system as NAT'd people start to greatly outnumber non-NAT'd people. Of course, if we all had IPv6, this wouldn't be a problem.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. Re:Another Google buyout? by jasongetsdown · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    --
    useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
  5. Well, yeah. by Ieshan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you send email to someone on gmail, or you IM someone who's using Google-Talk, sure, Google could have a copy of that.

    But lets be realistic. Google probably doesn't want any information about *you*, they probably want to *aggregate information*, which is what they've been doing all along.

    This is all an extension of search. Through all the "omg", "lol", and "haha"s in Instant Messenger, there's thousands of words that can be associated with both each other and with other links. There's thousands of white-listed and black-listed participants, because people naturally filter their conversations. They don't want a database about *you*, they want a relational database about *communication*, to make it easier to find out what someone means when they type something like "river bank" or "white house".

    It's all about relationships between language. Conversation is a natural extension. They provide a service, they get tons of data.

    At least, this is what I would be doing with the data. Google might not be doing that.

  6. Re:Another Google buyout? by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well until Google gives me a reason not to trust them, I will. They actively compete on their merits, not on monopoly or force. If you search for an address they still give you links for Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and Mapquest. They have donated large sums of money to OSS and have paid for many developers to work on it over them summer. Now they are using their weight to standardize instant messaging the way e-mail is standardized. If you read Google Talk's site, you'll see that a big initiative is getting instant messaging into a state like e-mail is where you can IM anyone on any network from any IM client. Jabber has server2server capabilities and thus will greatly help this effort. If I ever sense that they are misusing my information, then I'll think about leaving them, but until then, they have my full support. They have literally made the internet a better place to be.
    Regards,
    Steve