The big tech buzz of the day is Google unveiling their new instant messaging (IM) service Google Talk. Google Talk requires that you have a GMail account to be able to sign in. Like some of the other IM services, you can do voice chats over Google Talk if you’re using their windows client.
What makes Google Talk different than some of the other IMs out there? The fact that it is built on open standards. Google Talk is built on the Jabber/XMPP standard. XMPP stands for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol.
Right now, Google only has a client they produce for Windows based computers. If you’re not using Windows, and I’m not, there are number of other clients that already support Jabber that you can use. I’m using Gaim on Linux with great success. Unfortunately, with these non-Windows clients you don’t get voice. However, according to their developer FAQ they’ll be documenting the protocol they use for the voice chat so that others can implement it.
I did download the Windows client and install it on one of my test boxes here at the CRT labs and tried a few things out.
The client is very nice and minimalistic. It doesn’t have any extra features you really don’t need in an IM client in my opinion. Some of the other IM clients from the big IM services have a lot of extra functionality you may not want. Examples of these features are integrated web searches, skins, icon collections, news tickers. It is missing one feature that is very useful to me: multi-party chat.
The voice support just blew me away. I have to admit, I haven’t used other voice chat services like Skype, so I can’t do a comparison. The audio was clear, full duplex, and I had a great quick conversation with a buddy of mine since we were both at work. It sounded better than my land-line at home. It should be noted that we’re both at businesses that are well connected to the Internet. I’d be curious to see how the sound quality is over lower speed connections like modems or entry-level DSL.
In any case Google Talk looks like a good first step for Google into the IM arena. Its in beta now, but it looks like they have grander plans than what we’re seeing today. I’ll be using it, but I might not always be voice available. If anyone wants to say hi, I’ll be on as kgarner.crt@gmail.com
