Google Talk

GoogleTalk, Google’s new chat / IM client was released yesterday in beta.  I downloaded it immediately and began playing with it, mostly talking with my sister and with TvDetective after forcing them to signup too.

The Good:

1. EXTREMELY simple to download and install
2. Intuitive to use
3. No clutter, no ads, no pop-ups, no news, no extra windows, no spyware, etc.
4. Excellent voice chat that even my parents could use. 

The Bad:

1. Requires gmail account
2. Doesn’t save chat transcripts for you
3. No group chats
4. Nobody uses it (yet, anyway) so there’s nobody to chat with
5. No good reason to switch from AIM or MSN or YIM.  It offers no additional features, and lacks several that the other services already offer.

The fact that GoogleTalk requires a gmail account isn’t inherently bad; after all, all of the IM services out there require you to sign up for an account of some sort.  But the gmail account links your IM info to your email info and your search info, so Google is really able to build up quite a database about individuals.  Plus, gmail is now open to everyone, but the way you get a new account is via your cellphone, which is yet one more critical piece of info they have about you.  At least up until now you were just an anonymous user,  but once they have your cellphone #, they can link your info to a real person.  That’s getting a little scary for my taste (which prompted me to switch my default search engine to Clusty btw).

If you have Trillian Pro, you can use it as your GoogleTalk client, and that way you can save transcripts of IM chats, but it doesn’t support the audio chat as far as I can tell.  I will probably keep Google’s client around for voice chat only, but I don’t see a reason to use it for IM.  The only things that could change my mind on that front would be 1) if it became interoperable with AOL Instant Messenger (which is where most of my chat friends are), or 2) all of my friends switched to GoogleTalk.

Others seem to agree with my analysis, except they also complain about the lack of a search box.  I’m not sure i understand this, unless they’re talking about search of past chats.  Because if they just want to search the web, they should open their browser, which they have to do anyway in order to look at any of their search results, right?

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents.