In praise of Google Talk

I’ve taken the piss out of Google Talk a few times on this blog. Well, with the buzz about the new Google Chat idea that integrates IM into Gmail (which is being phased in), I felt like testing out the chat history, which saves your Google Talk conversations in your Gmail account (the one feature that I can use at the moment).

So I had a wee conversation with my brother just to see what the chat history was like. It’s pretty basic, almost exactly the same as the chat window in Google Talk. But that’s all you need. And because for some reason MSN Messenger’s chat history won’t work for me at the moment (serves me right for using beta versions of both MSN Messenger and Internet Explorer I guess), it’s +1 for Google Talk.

And as my test conversation went on I ended up being very impressed with Google Talk. To be fair, I had only ever used it a couple of times, and that was on the day that Google Talk launched. Which is a bit ago now.

Anyway, the upshot of it is that Google Talk simply does the job. It’s a swish, clean and basic interface, that gets across all the information you need in a novel way. I was surprised that they still haven’t got emoticons there yet — I suggested that Google just wanted to be retro about it, and my brother said that he liked Google Talk’s approach to emoticons anyway!

The appeal of Google Talk, I’ve decided, is that it sheds all of the bloat that comes with all the other major IM clients. MSN Messenger is just about the only IM client I use, simply because it’s what all my friends use. But it is filled with stupid features like nudges and winks and goodness knows what else. I really could do without all that. Google Talk goes right back to basics, and gives you what you need: instant messaging, with VOIP on the side.

My brother expressed his disappointment that Google Talk had not become a kind of Jabber-style application that would let you communicate with users of MSN, Yahoo! and AIM. Google Talk hasn’t revolutionised IM in the same way that Gmail revolutionised email — but it’s not Google’s fault that there isn’t a standard, er, standard for IM. This reminds me, though — what happened to MSN and Yahoo! merging their IM systems. I haven’t heard anything about that in ages. I take it this is still happening?

And VOIP! I had never tried this before. It suddenly occurred to me that I could use the microphone that came with my iRiver. My brother informed me that pink sockets mean microphone sockets. Yes.

This in turn spurred me on to finally download Skype. I’ll be honest with you hear: it’s pretty shit when you haven’t got any contacts. And can you believe that ‘doctorvee’ was taken! What a bastard! I have had to invent a variation: doc-vee. Ew.

So the desire to test a pretty basic chat history feature in Gmail when I was bored led to a mini revolution in the way I use IM. Until tomorrow when I revert back to MSN because all my friends are on it. Because that’s the other problem with IM. No matter how good an IM client is, it is difficult to switch over simply because you have to use the one that all your friends are using, otherwise you’ll have nobody to talk to. Which means using MSN. Gah!

The media’s love affair with Google has continued apace today. Google sniffed, and the media shat itself.

While I obviously don’t think it’s pleasent that Google is censoring its results in China, I am actually surprised that they weren’t already doing that. Remember a year or so back when MSN banned its Chinese users from using words like “democracy” on MSN Spaces? This is not new. Google is not setting a precedent.

Google’s censorship was the subject of Victoria Derbyshire’s phone-in (which is always a laugh, or depressing, depending on how optimistic you feel about humanity). One man phoned it to say that he had deleted Google from his own computer, as well as his wife’s and childrens’ computers, in protest. To which another texter replied, “Who’s the censor now?”

And who is prepared to get rid of Windows from their computer because of MSN’s own censorship? And as one commenter over at The Guardian‘s tech blog notes:

Who’s being hypocritical here? Google, or those who condemn its actions in China while being more tolerant of “good” censorship in Germany and France?

What is with the media’s obsession with Google? When Google Talk launched, the BBC was all over it. It was mentioned in Five Live’s bulletins every half hour, it got its own report on the 6 O’Clock News, and probably lots more coverage as well. This was despite the fact Google Talk is complete shit. It might have had a couple of nifty, quaint features, but that doesn’t merit a slot on the 6 O’Clock News. Google Talk did nothing new then, and it still does nothing new now. I never use it. In fact, I think just about everything Google has done since Gmail was launched has been a complete disappointment.

doctorvee

Archive: voip