I was the first one in my family to be familiar with computers from the time I was first born. When I was born, we had an old Commodore machine with DOS installed. It had some fun games, including Wheel of Fortune, and a word processor, but other than, that, it wasn't that special. One fine day, my father accidentally screwed up all the filenames, so that was the end of that. I do remember the old truly *floppy* "floppy" disks with fondness.
When I was around 4 or 5, my mother got an Apple PowerMac 7200 that was primarily to be for her computer graphics (she was taking a class on it at the time). My brother, who was about 10 or 11, immediately became infatuated with it, became a Mac person, and then taught me how to do many things on it.
Today, I have an iMac, albeit a rather old one, and am still a complete copmuter geek, but with more experience.
Just because Google is primarily a search company doesn't mean that everything they do has to be related to information. Sure, Google's "excuse" for creating Gmail was because "e-mail is an important way of accessing information for many people," which is not necessarily untrue, but the main reason, I perceive, is just to provide a cool new feature for the use of the public.
Thus, I believe that instant messaging would be a logical next step. It's cool, it's feature-y, and it will help Google compete with MSN, Yahool, and AOL, all of which already have popular instant messaging services. None of them are all that great, or as good as a Google IM service could be.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, finally. All these years of speculation, the United Nations, and treaties is resulting in something.
Of course, the U.S. doesn't approve of this, as we reject the Kyoto Treaty.
I was the first one in my family to be familiar with computers from the time I was first born. When I was born, we had an old Commodore machine with DOS installed. It had some fun games, including Wheel of Fortune, and a word processor, but other than, that, it wasn't that special. One fine day, my father accidentally screwed up all the filenames, so that was the end of that. I do remember the old truly *floppy* "floppy" disks with fondness. When I was around 4 or 5, my mother got an Apple PowerMac 7200 that was primarily to be for her computer graphics (she was taking a class on it at the time). My brother, who was about 10 or 11, immediately became infatuated with it, became a Mac person, and then taught me how to do many things on it. Today, I have an iMac, albeit a rather old one, and am still a complete copmuter geek, but with more experience.
Just because Google is primarily a search company doesn't mean that everything they do has to be related to information. Sure, Google's "excuse" for creating Gmail was because "e-mail is an important way of accessing information for many people," which is not necessarily untrue, but the main reason, I perceive, is just to provide a cool new feature for the use of the public. Thus, I believe that instant messaging would be a logical next step. It's cool, it's feature-y, and it will help Google compete with MSN, Yahool, and AOL, all of which already have popular instant messaging services. None of them are all that great, or as good as a Google IM service could be.