Google Talk could be better
Google has always been well aware of the fact that we, the people, just cant stop talking about them. It seems as though a blend of narcissism & wickedness struck them perhaps and Google Talk became their latest offering. With Google Talk, Google has apparently made its first move into the Instant Messaging field. Currently in its very basic and beta stage; Google Talk is an IM that supports PC-to-PC Voice calls, to put it in the simplest way possible. And of course, it’s free.
The file size mentioned (900KB) on its download page sure will make jaws drop as it is bound to happen at an orgasmic speed. While the dial-up users may cheer for the download size, they just might be put off by the minimum requisites for Google Talk. It requires Windows XP/2000 and a minimum of 56k Internet connection ( broadband is recommended though). While the line-speed requirement is justified for what it does, one might just complain that Google Talk doesn’t support many other popular platforms yet. But Google says fear not, Mac and Linux users can connect to Google Talk using other IM Clients (viz. Adium, GAIM, iChat, Miranda, Psi and Trillian Pro); as it is based on an open technology called Jabber which was created to help different networks talk to each other but here lies again a major put off here is that Voice Calls to other Google Talk users can only be made through Google Talk and connecting through these other clients will be only good for text chatting. Here Google Talk is losing on potential users who operate on other platforms. And then, to be able to Google Talk, you need to have an account at Google. Now here again Google will have a tough job to lure users as the MSN, YIM, AOL loyalists wont really fancy migrating to Gmail just for the sake of putting free PC-to-PC Voice calls to use using Google Talk; because as it is, the Instant Messengers they are using right now has all the features that Google Talk has plus much much more features that have been constantly growing and improved over the years.
Being among the many toys that Google has given the people to play with; we tried testing its compatibility with some of them. Google Talk fuses itself seamlessly with the new Google Desktop v2.0 BUT the Google Talk chat logs doesn’t get indexed by its own Desktop Search engine (there’s no plug-in at least till the time this article is being written). What fails to our understanding is; Google could and should have made sure that Google Talk integrates with its other applications for it was released only couple of days after Google came out with it’s new version of Google Desktop.
Coming to the actual thing now; the UI is only similar to any other IM, only that it is much cleaner. Clicking on a friend in a standard looking friends list will open an IM window for that person, and clicking on the phone icon to the right of their name will start a voice session. The buddy list allows you to rename contacts and tweak other settings, like whether Gmail-only contacts are shown. When you have multiple IM windows open, they show up in a neat sliding interface which you can dock to the buddy list, “roll up,” or tear away. And the only search that Google Talk does is quick finding of contacts from the accounts Google contact list. Surprising that, Search Engine King Google doesn’t even have the native web search box on it like other messengers. Only that one might feel like having a stripped naked IM experience because, at least at this stage, Google Talk deprives its users many a features that people are madly in love with e.g. display pictures, emoticons, audibles/winks, IMVironment/Backgrounds and love to use their messenger for reading cutomized news, listen to online radio, watch video streams et al. All other IM users have been spoiled to the core by being able to Video+Voice+Text chat; Google Talk currently only supports text and voice chatting. Currently one cant even leave offline messages to contacts or indulge in group conferencing; neither can one log on in ‘invisible’ mode or block anyone as such. Some sites mentioned Google Talk’s ability to show a recent history (twenty lines or so) being displayed in the window of a contact you’d recently talked to, as an unique feature; but hello? MSN and YIM does that already. If Google is boasting solely on ’superior voice technology; users have already given their feedback … Google Talk only gets as good as Skype/YIM. You may ask ’so what in the world does Google Talk stand apart in as compared to the others?’ Well, Nothing more than what ever we have mentioned here … as of now, it has not one unique feature that gives it a cutting edge over the others (except for the fact that users from many other clients can connect to Google Talk, but it is honestly not worth mentioning till the client supports more than just plain text chatting). Instead there’s Everest of a mountain that Google Talk has to climb to even flinch these other IM Clients which have been existent since at least the past ten years. As per records, PC telephony market is reigned by Skype with the maximum number of users. Apparently, we have to say talk is cheap, Google wants to make it free … it already is with other IM Clients, now play some nice & unique tricks to lure us ’cause currently Google Talk doesn’t seem to have any pull to it.Don't miss another post! Subscribe by RSS feed or by email today!
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I disagree with the author. I have an old yahoo messanger, that I specifically searched out and installed, just to avoid having all the bells and whistles like imvironments, news, stocks, audibles and such – which only bloat the software. I need IM messengers for one purpose only – and that is IM! I use skype for one purpose only and that is voice-voice. If I need to read the news, I got my browser. If I need to see nice pictures… I got my browser.
I applaud google talk on keeping it simple, I hope if they do add those “bells and whistles” that you talk about, they add it as plugins, so that people like me don’t have to look for older versions of the programs, where things did only what they were supposed to do.
Disagree with Jaro. It’s like going back to DOS because it always did the job. Why do we need Vista anyways ?
Use pigeons ! Who needs email !
Pratik, Jaro simply means to say that all he needs an IM program to do is allow him to IM with someone else, not that whatever does the job will work.
His viewpoint, as far as I can tell, is that Google Talk is simple enough that he doesn’t have to wade through what he doesn’t want, but also has just the right amount of features, so that he gets what he wants out of it.
I’m not sure who in their right mind would use YIM though…
Anyways, your comparison between going back to DOS and going back to an old Instant Messenger is a very poor one, as DOS did NOT in fact do the job, considering it lacked a GUI, and support for modern hardware. Google Talk on the other hand, does not lack very much when it comes to the heart of IM.
My personal comments are that I agree with the author, I won’t be switching to Google Talk unless they come out with some good plugins to add functionality. Yeah I’d rather have plugins than have to get everything and not use it all; there are still people like me still running 1Ghz processors and 256 MB of ram, we need all the system resources we can get sometimes.
For now I’m sticking with Gaim, but you can be sure I’ll be connecting to Jabber from now on.
I’m not sure about Google talk. They’ve given a fresh Google outlook on IM programs by providing (as they always do) a simple, powerful program. I wonder though what percentage of people who use IM are of the crazy frog generation. Where mobile ringtones and logos are more important than having a program that loads quickly. MSN messenger certainly seems to be catering for that market with more and more than a hundreds ways to produce a
I think I’d prefer a bare bones IM program that did what it said on the tin, but fear I’m probably in the minority.
well, very fun & nice…
but there is nobody on this network yet….
Actually, my buddies and I are using Google Talk. We use it for computer to computer voice because of the quality. It feels just like talking with a regular VoIP to VoIP phone but only free. The only reason we still have Yahoo Messenger installed on our computers still is the lack of conference calls in Google Talk. In this thread I do have to agree with Jaro. They better come up with some good plug-ins really soon.
I strongly disagree with the author about google talk not being able to lure people to their new chat software. i use google talk to chat with people oversees and i can tell you that it is the best voice quality i have ever had until now. I have tried almost every IM that is available on the web and google talk is the best and clearest. The network is down sometimes but that is ok as long as we can understand each other. MSN and Yahoo messenger are so bad that most of the time the connection cannot be established or one party hears and the other does not. I think that google people will certainly be working to improve and add a few things to their google talk, that is the nature of their job. However, I think that both MSN and Yahoo peolpe have a lot of work on their hands when it comes to the voice and video in their messengers.
I think that google talk is a weast of time mns is one of the best talks ever and I agri with Dave you are rigth Dave.
Google talk is pretty good.
its simple and not full of bells and whistles as
stated above. i think they should give you the option later down the road to install exstensions like FF does.
thats about it. keep it simple and safe!
I also accept with some of the other users, the voice quality is good.I had to call to a remote village with modem connectivity, almost all IM’s I have tried before , but google talk is the best voice chat.
I think that the simple interface is great and I definitely don’t care about little personalization tools that add glitter and unwanted graphics (like AIM). However, one thing that I would like to see is the ability to send images and other files. I can’t count how many times I needed to send a friend a screenshot but couldn’t.
Oh, by the way, you can bold words in gtalk by putting stars around them (ex: *I’m bold*) and you can put them in italics with underscores (ex: _I’m Italic_)
i m understading on thing in gtalk ,if i want to invisible mode in gtalk so ..how can i achive.i there any facility which will provide how to enter in invisible in gtalk
I remind, when gtalk started, they did have being invisible facility, Its not a big deal to make for google…but they did make gtalk cause they wanted to give it uniqueness….Though About the person who claimed best voice quality of gtalk, I wanted him to talk using yahoo/skype these days…I always talk with ma mom and dad…I found these 2 messengers better …really best quality of voice.
I went through the comments and saw that everyone has their own views and I appreciate that. I would like to add a few of my own now
. I am currently a full time user of gtalk (mostly gmail version) though used to use yahoo messenger 24×7 earlier. For me the ease of use is really a big plus. Also the resource usage by the software. I think so though the new messengers give you a lot of addons, but they come at a cost of consuming more RAM and making your system slower. I would like to add that I preferred shifting from skype to gtalk for talking to my mom, because my moms pc is not that fast and because of it skype didn’t work properly, but gtalk did. I would say if you have a beast of a PC with you then definitely opt for the software which provides you with loads of features, but the main thing i feel that is important is whether you can use all the other softwares on your machine simultaneously with the IM.
Hello friendz. I read every ones reviewz. I too go with those who support low resource eating , most simple and high voice quality Gtalk. May be personally, I still prefer Yahoo on Gchat and that too because of the wide range of emoticons and IMvironments available on it, still i feel some thing special may be simple about Gtalk. May be when I IM through Yahoo or MSN, I feel somewhat like being in a personal environment and in case of Gchat I feel to be in more of a professional environment.