- A first look at Google Talk
We knew it was coming and were sworn to secrecy, but it's finally here. So lets cut to the crunch - how good is it?
The first surprise - and compared to Yahoo's long established and feature laden rival it is a surprise - is how simple it is. It does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a straightforward simple chat client. There are no smileys, no 'environments' or games. There is a simple link to you gmail inbox and the ability to add contacts ... and that about it. Gizmo junkies look elsewhere.
However, Google's killer app is the speech function. Compared to rivals it's refreshingly simple to set up with no setup wizards, volume calibration or the like, it just ... works. And we couldn't find any system it had problems on. And the voice service was fast and glitch free.
What's probably most surprising of all is the lack of integration with other Google services, such as the new desktop search/HUD launched yesterday.
Will it take off? The IM market is pretty saturated, and services like Skype (and Yahoo) offer similar products with the ability to contact phones too, and on the face of this, Google has a long way to go to catch up.
It would be tempting to write Talk off as too little too late, but then, a few years ago Google was a tiny upstart search engine with a deceptively primitive interface which couldn't possibly rival the likes of Altavista ... or could it?
Download it and decide for yourselves from :
http://www.google.com / talk /
