Oh Google Talk and GMail Chat, When Will You Have the Same Features?

Written by: Peter Jalbert on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
Posted to: Gmail, Google, IM/Chat/Talk
One comment, add yours!

It was supposed to be the other way around. GMail chat was supposed to be a supplementary to Google talk, meaning GTalk would be the main Google IM, while GMail chat (or GMail + Chat) would be a backup, for those people who just don’t have the time, resources, or bandwidth to download a 900-kilobyte Gtalk client installer.

Why are we ranting about this? We noticed that GTalk and GMail chat now have different feature sets. Granted that GTalk supports VoIP calls and GMail chat does not (for now, at least). However, little by little we’re beginning to see that the good people at Google are focusing on developing for GMail chat earlier than GTalk. And in many instances, the new stuff appearing on GMail chat aren’t appearing on GTalk, and the other way around.

Can’t we have some standardized set-up here? Here’s what we’d like to have.

Smileys in GTalk. Okay, just having the regular :) and :D is quite lame. Yeah, you get to see them highlighted in blue. But that’s just about it. GMail chat has live, moving, cutesy smileys for just about anything. I feel weird when my contacts tell me how cute my smiley is, when to me it’s just a bunch of colons and parentheses.

Pictures and themes on GMail chat. I’m not fond of using GMail chat, but the rare occasion that I used it, I was so disappointed with the lack of theme and image options. There’s only one way I can see the profile picture of the person I’m chatting with and that’s through his or her profile. In GTalk, I like seeing his/her face or avatar on every line typed!

VoIP in GMail chat. I want to be able to talk (as in with my own voice) to my friends–through a Web browser! Other VoIP providers can do this. Why can’t Google Talk? It’s just a matter of creating some plugin or ActiveX script for this to work.

There are probably a million more things we’d like to see on Google Talk / GMail chat. They’re likely to get there, but the question is when?

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One Response to “Oh Google Talk and GMail Chat, When Will You Have the Same Features?”

  1. # Eric Lussieron 26 Jun 2006 at 1:04 am

    Google is probably not interested in using any of Microsoft’s shoddy security ridden technologies. Perhaps a link at the top of the gmail chat window that would automatically open gtalk and call the person.

    The one thing I really want in gmail chat is color differences between the lines that I type and the lines that the person i’m chatting with types. Shade the background slightly or make my lines slightly lighter… anything!!!

    A way to drag the window slightly taller without going full screen would be good as well.