1996 called, they want their IM back

3 Comments
24 Aug

You probably heard it by now, but Google just released their own instant messaging service… Google Talk. So far, it’s pretty basic in what it does, and isn’t particularly revolutionary. Usually, the stuff Google cranks out is usually pretty jaw-dropping awesome and just fundamentally changes the way you think about doing something. Google Search provided search that just worked. GMail gave us practically unlimited email storage, along with intuitive threaded conversations. The Google Maps interface is how online maps should work. I’m surprised Mapquest still hasnt caught on yet. However, Google Talk doesn’t really to bring anything new to the table. To quote a Ars Technica review: “[Google Talk is] … the stone age of Instant Messaging.” In fact, everything Google Talk does has been done before.

To be fair, this program is barely 24 hours old, and I’m sure there will be lots of improvements in the future. One thing that does hold a lot promise is the fact that Google Talk uses open standards. This is significant because they may be able to use that to unify all the different instant messaging programs (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) into a common standard so that people on different networks can finally talk to each other.

In anycase, Google can now check off another box on their way to total world domination.

Posted on Wednesday, Aug 24th 2005 at 12:13 pm
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3 comments

  1. # Dan Abrey Aug 24, 2005

    To be fair to Google, and even though your headline did make me laugh out loud quite hard, their IM app ‘just works’, too. It may lack some of the features of other apps, but most of them are so memory-heavy that I barely miss them at all.

    Their applications have always only included neccessities. In MSN Messenger you have tabs, and adverts, and emoticons, and display pictures, and backgrounds, and a load of other stuff which eats your RAM like, well, something that eats a lot of RAM.

    A few improvements and I’m in.

  2. # Roba Aug 24, 2005

    Although admittedly, Talk did not break any technological boundaries, I am so psyched up over the fact that for once, here’s an IM program that was not designed for the eyes of 13 year old giggling girls.

    I’m sick of yellow, ugly, over-excited emoticons and rude inventions such as winks.

  3. # Joe Tan Aug 24, 2005

    Although admittedly, Talk did not break any technological boundaries, I am so psyched up over the fact that for once, here’s an IM program that was not designed for the eyes of 13 year old giggling girls.

    I’m sick of yellow, ugly, over-excited emoticons and rude inventions such as winks.

    hey!

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