Popagandhi

We have been expecting it for weeks - Google has launched Google Talk. There have been instant messaging networks for as long as many of us remember being online; while the current market leader in internet telephony, Skype, has picked up 51 million users by making VoIP easy enough for your mum to understand.

The buzzword for IM these days is “video”, one hears (for MSN Messenger, it is “more ridiculous emoticons”). So why does Google burst onto the scene… with only IM and audiocalls on the platter?

What leapt out at me when I read the website, wasn’t how “beta software” is “Windows only” - but “OS X and Linux can connect to Google Talk using other IM clients”. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one small detail for us, but a giant step for the world of instant messaging.

AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! are all closed, proprietary networks, respectively administered by an ISP, a software giant/OS hegemony, and the search engine that lost to Google. By building within, each of their services - at least where IM is concerned - cannot be differentiated from the other. The only factor which makes one choose MSN Messenger over AOL, for example, would depend wholly on where you live and where your friends connect to - the average Singaporean is not likely to care much for AOL, as an average American is not likely to care much for MSN Messenger. Similarly, the respective giants run their IM services by hoping to tap into their large subscriber database.

While I’ve never been too affectionate about Google, I have come to see it as the one giant to be preferred over the rest; and what is there to dislike? They have done well at offering what one expects from them, and then some. By shunning banner ads and preferring discreet text ads when the former was all the rage during the dot com bubble days and after, by consistently innovating, being the first to present what email users have always thought but never voiced out about: why should email be deleted? Why shouldn’t we have more storage space? Why shouldn’t emails flow the way they do in conversation? And now - why should IM be closed?

Unlike the other proprietary services, Google Talk uses the Jabber/XMPP protocol. Google is apparently talking about integrating its services with Earthlink and SIPPhone - which means that if you, like me, use the Gizmo phone, you will soon be able to call anyone on the Google Talk network, without installing additional software. On the same day, Skype opens up its platform to the world - which could also mean the same thing.

The potential for Google Talk lies in how above any other competing IM service, it easily has the clout to entice users of other services, regardless of where they live. The way things are at present, the slice of the IM pie still more or less follows geographic boundaries: AOL in North America, Messenger in Asia and Europe, Yahoo! scattered between the two. Clientside, while iChat offers seamless video and audio conferencing for Mac users on AOL, and the Windows version of Messenger obviously offers whatever A/V conferencing capability Microsoft can throw at us, there is no middle ground. Google can be this middle ground. As long as they work on developing for other platforms, or at least aid developers in doing so - and it would be insanely great. And they seem to be.

As beta software, it remains to be seen what Google really has up its sleeves. But whatever it is, sign me up for it.

Google Talk is still in beta, and only available for current holders of Gmail accounts - which is also in beta. If you need an account, I have 50 to give out.