Google Talk

Google stepped into IM market. I’ve not tried it yet, but after read through the website, I’ve not seen any feature that differentiates it from other IM (from end user stand point). From developers (or geeks) standpoint, it runs on the open XMPP protocol, so that you might develop your own chat client to chat with your friends who are using Google Talk. This could leverage the standardization of the IM protocol. The idea of “service choice” stated on the Google Talk website (http://www.google.com/talk/developer.html) is interesting. People should have an opportunity to use their favorite chat client to talk to their friends regardless of which chat client their friends are using. I used to have ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger run on my computer at the same time because each of my friends has different preference in IM client.

From the business standpoint, this is another step of Google in internet service market. Nowadays, a lot of people are using IM all day. The IM user network is very huge and it could be a great advertising channel. Google Talk beta version doesn’t have any ads. It’s interesting to see if Google would integrate Google Talk to its ads service later (just like MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, and other IM service providers did). Google could integrate Google Talk to its ads system, so that it could display the ads that relate to what people are chatting in the Google Talk. Or Google might come up with new idea to gain benefit from its Google Talk rather than adding ads to it. Additionally, GMail account is required to login to Google Talk. This could leverage the number of its GMail user accounts. Google Talk could add more value to GMail to compete with other free email providers who have been increasing the size of the inbox to compete with GMail.

It’s interesting to see if Google Talk could fight with the network externality power of other IM service providers such as MSN, Yahoo, and AOL.

Let’s try …

http://www.google.com/talk/