Google Instant Messenger Coming Really (or Not?) 577
bach37 writes "Google is rumored to launch its own instant messenger tomorrow." Other sources are reporting that talk.google.com is running jabber. Of course we've also had stories about all this being rumors
180 degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would they make one anyway? Doesn't really seem to fit with their current strategy unless they tie it into gmail somehow.
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:4, Informative)
Cleverly it is used for picture sharing which avoids direct competition with the established IM clients.
http://www.hello.com/ [hello.com]
Posting only because I dont have mod points to push the parent post all the way up to 5
Re:180 degrees? (Score:3, Funny)
Hello is designed to let you send high-quality pictures instantly and securely over any speed connection, even dialup. With Hello, you can send hundreds of high quality pictures to your friends in just seconds--you can't do that with email.
Damn, I hope they apply this to all files soon so people with dialup connections can download Gentoo instantly!!
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah: it still works, you just need to send at least the start of a valid Jabber stream. Instead of "?" try sending:
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
<stream:stream from="gmail.com" id="E454F69B" xmlns:stream="http://etherx.jabber.org/streams" xmlns="jabber:client">
Notice the "from". It seems to be related to gmail some how?
this can only mean one thing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't really seem to fit with their current strategy unless they tie it into gmail somehow.
Google's strategy is this: make as many people as possible click on their ads. Gmail was one extension of this idea. It let Google deliver ads not only when people were searching the Internet, but also when they read their emails. A Google IM service would do the same thing. Now Google would also be able to deliver ads when people were chatting.
In fact, if I were Google, I would be working on Google Browser. Then they could deliver ads whenever someone was browsing the Internet!
You mean "Opera"? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean Opera [opera.com]? That's what it does. Serves Google ads as soon as you open the browser, and then for each page you visit.
Re:You mean "Opera"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You mean "Opera"? (Score:3, Interesting)
So Google's next acquisition is Opera. Maybe they can make that not suck now...
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would anyone use an AdWare WebBrowser, when there are completely free alternatives, like Firefox, without the ads to piss you off?
Both you and this chap [slashdot.org] seem to be thinking along the same line.
However, I think you folks are wrong. Google *could* convince people to use their browser IF they bundled it with some other useful software/service. For example, if they came out with a free service that allowed people to voice chat from their computer to any regular phone and bundled it with the browser, tons of people would switch to Google Browser.
Re:180 degrees? (Score:2, Insightful)
Think of how valuable that information would be to a marketer.
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:3, Interesting)
Take a look at the sidebar that comes with the latest google desktop, and you'll see it fits like a charm.
unless they tie it into gmail somehow.
That would be a natural thnkg to do, yes. And the sidebar would make it a lot easier to do.
Doesn't mean I necessarily believe they are doing this, but I hope so.
Re:180 degrees? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1851272,00.a
Re:Of course it fits into their strategy! (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Multiplatform? I think not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Multiplatform? I think not. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:180 degrees? (Score:4, Insightful)
> it, I've had very rapid conversations going back and forth.
IM has never been about having rapid conversations back and forth. email, assuming you have a decent mail service, has always been capable of more rapid back-and-forth conversations than most current IM services can manage on a good day. We did this all the time when I was in college, using Pegasus Mail (still one of the best clients available) over a campus-wide Novell network. (There was a connection to the rest of the world too, for off-campus mail.)
And there has also always been IRC, since before IM was ever devised.
What is IM, then? What makes IM what it is? IM is about various kinds of notification: tracking the other user's online-ness (or not), hearing a sound when someone comes online, being interrupted (with a window popping to the front and stealing focus from whatever you were in the process of doing) whenever you receive a message, that sort of thing. These are features POP3 and SMTP don't really support (though they could have been extended to support it, but that's another matter).
Re:180 degrees? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps your email client is significantly different from all I have used, but I don't see how email could beat IM for speed of quick conversations. Most email clients separate each message, making you click or take some action to view a new message, while with IM you are always seeing the same conversation. Email clients also have no support for multiple concurent conversations (a la tabbed / multiple windows of IM clients). (By "email clients" I mean things like pine, elm, mutt, evolution, outlook, eudo
Re:180 degrees? (Score:3, Funny)
if it comes out... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:if it comes out... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason everything is still in beta is because Google wants to find out what their 'core' set of applications are going to be. Once they find the real crowd pleaser beta applications, they can work on a final release of each with features that integrate all of them.
It may never happen, but I think an instant messenger service could be an interesting way to unite the applications, like drawing a map in a google earth and using it's GoogleChat plug-in to send the
It's just an idea.
Re:if it comes out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:if it comes out... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) It requires a GMail account
2) It is automatically available to all GMail users from their web interfaces
Then:
3) It is a masterstroke. In one day they'll go from zero IM users to zillions. Bravo Google.
Daniel
Re:if it comes out... (Score:3, Informative)
Someone at google... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Someone at google... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Someone at google... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Someone at google... (Score:3, Funny)
Huh? You will start making assumptions about what they're doing after they announce what they're doing?
VOIP dialing from buddy list (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:VOIP dialing from buddy list (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:VOIP dialing from buddy list (Score:5, Funny)
I can just imagine...
So Bob, I was talking to Jim the other day about that new medication he's on...
BEEEEP, Google here, I heard you talking about medication, can I interest you in some PENIS ENLARGEMENT PILLS? Press 3 followed by the hash key to learn more, or press 1 to continue your conversation.
Re:VOIP dialing from buddy list (Score:4, Funny)
Press 3 followed by the hash key to learn more
You really think they'll make you calculate the hash key? I know Google engineers are smart but I didn't know they expect that much from their customers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:VOIP dialing from buddy list (Score:3, Interesting)
Let everyone in your network use it for free, then charge for the PSTN gateways. If you have enough presence in each country you can undercut the competition and still make a profit.
YAIM (Score:5, Funny)
Just what we need!
Re:YAIM (Score:3, Funny)
This will be the Google Instant Messaging Program.
Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
They would have to come up with something pretty interesting to cause enough buzz to get people to switch I think.
Well, tomorrow will tell by the looks of things, one way or the other.
Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:2)
If they did manage to capture enough market, it would be an incredible means for them to deliver advertising. Think of it, a targetted adwords ad in the interface, refreshing every now and then based on the keywords in what you are discussing.
Brings up the old privacy problem, but it's gotta be a good way for G to make some more money out of adwords.
Hotmail (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they have nothing to gain and why would it be difficult? They offer something better (faster connections, less intrusive ads [since it would be supported by premium VoIP services], easier than remembering a number, more video features, more voice features, linking with cell phones, VoIP, more games, etc) and people will move to it. Better yet, support other messenger services (a-la Trillian... they can do this with Jabber for example) and why would anyone use MSN? There isn't really a barrier to entry. One geek will drag over their friends, and repeat.
-M
Re:Hotmail (Score:5, Insightful)
Jabber (Score:5, Informative)
-M
Re:Hotmail (Score:4, Funny)
geek... friends?
Except they really didn't. (Score:3, Interesting)
They've grabbed a lot of hype, that's for sure, but it did not translate into the actual users of the service. They're still below 5M users, while Hotmail has 100M+ users.
I do agree that Google is technically far superior to Hotmail, but as far as the number of actual users, they're not there yet, and at this point I don't know if they will be.
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SERVICES (Score:5, Interesting)
- reliability issues where it will go down for whole days or mornings at times- happening maybe every couple months for year. Google could use their high-availability knowledge to keep this lifeline alive
- integration to PSTN. If Google IM is always open, it's an easy transition to call family all around the world cheaply without the need to switch home phones and get a separate service (Skype for example).
- Fewer ads. Google would make its money on PSTN services, video conferences, features like '3-way calling' and 'conference calling' that need the network to merge several streams together or manage them. Google could make the ads smaller and less intrusive
- Fewer full-screen emoti-blips *hehe*
- file sharing, music sharing, resource sharing.
There is tons of untapped potential that M$ isn't doing. M$ is instead adding in full-screen emiti-blips (if I wanted a program to take over my whole screen when I'm working on something else, I would run a game.. It's happened before... typing in my credit card number and a MSN window takes focus... good thing I don't look at the keyboard when I type).
IM isn't just IM anymore. IM is about communication, information sharing, etc. All of Google's services are INFORMATION (search, maps, etc) or COMMUNICATION (gmail, talk) based- they're just adding more to the mix.
-M
Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they released an IM service based on jabber, they'd already have an install base ( albeit, not as large as aim/msn ), with the capabilities to talk to the other services through the server of your choice.
The trick would be releasing a decent client. I know of only one jabber client currently that's usable on a daily basis, the rest are just too awkward or weird ( interface design is not "easy" it would seem, or most people leave it as an afterthought, if it even gets that much ).
We'll see, regardless, over the next few days. I think it'd be interesting to see google jump behind jabber. That might give the project the kick in the ass it needs.
Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:4, Funny)
Does that client have a name and does it run under Windows?
Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just "Being Google" not enough. (Score:2)
And IM client could be very interesting. Of course what no one is saying is that Google could have been running a private jabbers server.
Video (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Video (Score:5, Funny)
No.
How many times do we have to go over this?
Okay. Now pay attention. The day we get something like that is the day Linus' head explodes and the stump of his neck becomes a nesting ground for wild geese.
Linux cannot, by unwritten rule, have IM with solid video capabilities. It's common law; it's like our magna carta.
Anyhow, if that's what you want then you could probably ask some guru which CLI tools to chain together quite against their will. Maybe something like this will work:
echo
(disclaimer: I love linux, but the parent is right; nothing decent like that for linux; careful, I have mod points - mention gnome meeting and I'll, err... err.)
Google Cliche'? (Score:5, Interesting)
With google trying to dominate searching, news, usenet, email and now chat? At what point in time will they become cliche'?
Re:Google Cliche'? (Score:5, Funny)
That should make IM Sex a whole lot more graphic!
OK, babe... I'm taking off your panties
Ads by Gooogle: New Victoria Secret panties available!
Ads Infinitum (Score:3, Insightful)
I think people would be pretty alarmed if as soon as they started talking about pizza on the telephone, an advertisement for a local pizza place appeared on the LCD screen of their phone base without their asking. In that context, it sounds downright creepy. There may be a legal distinction between phones and IM services, but I think most people would say there's no material moral difference.
This seems like
Re:Google Cliche'? (Score:5, Funny)
Beta (Score:2)
I was always taught to finish what you start...
Re:Beta (Score:2)
Gabber? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gabber? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, do you? :)
Re:Gabber? (Score:3, Informative)
If this rumor is true, and I run my own Jabber server, can my users connect through my server into Google's users?
That's a good question. At this moment, talk.google.com doesn't seem to be listening on port tcp/5269 (which is the standard Jabber/XMPP port for server to server communication), and c2s seems to require some special type of SASL authentification (maybe to discourage users to try connecting with a non-google Jabber client when the service starts). Of course, maybe they will enable s2s (and th
Google Talks? (Score:2, Interesting)
What happened to Google innovating and setting themselves apart? Suddenly they get an IPO and they feel they have to mimic the rest of the industry. If Google wants to be another Yahoo, MSN or AOL that's fine but I was really hoping for something new and different out there, not just a rehash of our current offerings with
Google might launch tomorrow (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway: Come back tomorrow and see if google really launched a IM. And if they do, then please not in google earth style or any other google windows only products. If they really want to play along with the big boys, they should make it crossplatform. It is what they owe their current status to!
Re:Google might launch tomorrow (Score:3, Insightful)
Because all the big boys (AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo) make their clients cross-platform, too? Seriously, that's not going to matter one bit. Clients will be written for whatever protocol they end up using. In all likelihood, that protocol will be Jabber, and there are already half a bazillion clients for that on many platforms.
``It is what they owe their current status to!''
No. They owe their current status to providing
Fail to see the point (Score:5, Insightful)
When they dominate Microsoft? (Score:2)
Why? AIM won't go away. (Score:2, Insightful)
The amount of users on AIM is the main pull to get it... If you want to talk to someone, most likely their IM program of choice is AIM. You're not going to switch, unless everyone you talk to switches as well... and I don't sense a mass exodus coming anytime soon.
Go to a college campus, and nearly everyone has a screen name on AIM... I know competition is good, but unless all these IM programs can talk amongst each other, I don't see anything overt
Re:Why? AIM won't go away. (Score:2)
Re:Why? AIM won't go away. (Score:2)
Re:Why? AIM won't go away. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people I know don't switch IM clients. You add them to the ones you already use. So AIM has the largest user base because they were first. I guess the question is, how many IM clients is too many, and will a client like Trillian obviate the intended utility of their product?
It's real: it's a Jabber server! (Score:5, Informative)
This time is not a rumor!
Try it for yourself. Send a string like:
to talk.google.com, port 5222. It will respond with a valid RFC 3920 [faqs.org] (Jabber) stream!
In other News -- Google Cap Up $Bn! (Score:5, Informative)
Shares of Google rose $2.54 to $276.55 on the Inet electronic brokerage system, from a $2.74.01 close on Nasdaq.
Boy oh Boy, that's almost $1 BN ($0.767 BN to be exact) jump in market cap. Tin foil hats and Conspiracy theorists, jump right in.
GIMP? (Score:2)
I'll use it... (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt many of my friends would go through the hassle of switching even if Google Talk turns out to be far superior; an IM program is little use without people to talk to.
Different? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need Google to be different then the other search engines, as long as it returns the most relevant results
Sounds Silly, but I wouldn't mind.. (Score:5, Interesting)
GAIM anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I already use gaim on windows, because I was fed up with having aim, yahoo, and MSN, Just to talk to a few people on each. They all baloon to 20+ MB of ram each while running. Gaim never reaches 20 while providing me with the same functionality.
The only problem is the file transfer and A/V chat features. When I want to use those I fire up the official client.
Here is hoping that google just throws some programmers at gaim and then rebrands it.
LOL (Score:3, Interesting)
No really, doesn't ANYONE see what google is doing? They own your searchs, they own our e-mail, they are trying to own all of our connections too - either through their "accelerator" service, or by sponsoring free wifi connections across the country. Google, wants to know what we are doing - they want the data so that they can target, model and predict our behavior. I'm not sure that it's such a great thing that one company have all of this information in one place, or it might be just me...
Re:Take off your tinfoil hat for a little while (Score:3, Informative)
Google can easily figure out who you are and what you are doing, what you are interested in, how you behave, and who you communicate with. Any service with google.com as the domain will allow them to cookie you - and provide visibilty of your identity across other google services, allowing them to easily aggregate your activities.
Really the reason that I bring this up is that pe
Jabber! (Score:4, Insightful)
Feature (Score:5, Interesting)
The potential to integrate your IM conversations into a web based store has NOT been investigated, despite Yahoo and MSN both seemingly having the capability to do so.
It would seem logging and storing ALL IM chats would likely be a waste of disk space as most of it is generally disposable, but I've had several chats I would like to refer back to with important URLs and phone numbers, etc.
Re:Feature (Score:5, Insightful)
Me: sup crack?
Him: i r busy bunghole
I really don't want to see that stuff saved for posterity (or the day I forget to log out of Gmail before my wife uses the computer).
Re:Feature (Score:5, Interesting)
Logging has proved invaluable. Not only is it useful for searching for phone numbers, addresses, etc. but it's really useful as a student so that you can go back and refer to discussions about a particular assignment.
I think that IM clients should enable logging by default.
Re:Feature (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, personal IMs are 99% deletable, in my experience.
No questions asked. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a company that has already blackballed a news organization that pointed out how easy digging out the dirt on its own executives is.
"Don't be evil" on a plaque is not enough protection against the most advanced data mining operation ever built. Regardless of intent, Google is what we always worried the feds would build and the online community keeps giving them more.
Possible Names for Google IM (Score:3, Funny)
More boring possibilities:
Google Chat
Google Messenger
Gtalk
Our new google.com overlords... (Score:3, Interesting)
Should I cheer them on, or be very afraid?
Here's a very interesting and well-done flash presentation [makingithappen.co.uk] on that subject.
Re:Revolutionary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Revolutionary (Score:3, Interesting)
gMail is good because its simple and does exactly what you expect it to, and nothing more. As much as giving almost unlimited inbox spaces was a marketing gimick it also got over the biggest, unnecessary headache of free email - storage space.
google.com works because they relised that a search engine should be just that, a search engine not a portal.
maps.google.com works because they took out the b
Re:It's open on tcp/5222 (Score:5, Interesting)