Saturday, August 27, 2005
Google Talk
So Google released Google Talk on Wednesday to a less than rapturous audience.
That's because those people are idiots.
Google Talk is a step in the direction that the Internet needs to be going. Sure, it's another offering in a crowded market (3 major protocols, at least 10 major clients). Sure, the Google Talk system doesn't offer nudges, emoticons, File Transfer, web cam or a whole slew of the other features offered by the major players.
What it offers is standards and interoperability. The two Google Talk protocols are going to be well-documented and open to the public. Want to make a phone call to someone on Google Talk? Want to write a program which aggregates conversations your company's employees have with each other while at work? It is this area, the area of what ifs and how abouts that Google Talk enables and proprietary protocols like Microsoft's stifle.
Oh...and you get voice transmission in a program that's 900KB, for crying out loud. Skype is almost an order of magnitude larger at 7200KB. Yahoo Messenger definitely is an order larger, at 10,066KB, as is Microsoft MSN at 8,900KB. The ability to make functional, compact programs is an art that seems to be lost on the world's developers -- Google Talk and Fog Creek Software's Copilot should be revered for their bucking of this unnecessary trend.
Not only is it light on hard drive usage, but it's better on CPU: Google Talk appears to use about 1/3 of the CPU that Skype does.
So, to the people who have turned Google Talk away without trying it, I challenge you: Use it for a week. Its clean design and "just works" nature will change your mindset, even if all of the politics behind it didn't.
That's because those people are idiots.
Google Talk is a step in the direction that the Internet needs to be going. Sure, it's another offering in a crowded market (3 major protocols, at least 10 major clients). Sure, the Google Talk system doesn't offer nudges, emoticons, File Transfer, web cam or a whole slew of the other features offered by the major players.
What it offers is standards and interoperability. The two Google Talk protocols are going to be well-documented and open to the public. Want to make a phone call to someone on Google Talk? Want to write a program which aggregates conversations your company's employees have with each other while at work? It is this area, the area of what ifs and how abouts that Google Talk enables and proprietary protocols like Microsoft's stifle.
Oh...and you get voice transmission in a program that's 900KB, for crying out loud. Skype is almost an order of magnitude larger at 7200KB. Yahoo Messenger definitely is an order larger, at 10,066KB, as is Microsoft MSN at 8,900KB. The ability to make functional, compact programs is an art that seems to be lost on the world's developers -- Google Talk and Fog Creek Software's Copilot should be revered for their bucking of this unnecessary trend.
Not only is it light on hard drive usage, but it's better on CPU: Google Talk appears to use about 1/3 of the CPU that Skype does.
So, to the people who have turned Google Talk away without trying it, I challenge you: Use it for a week. Its clean design and "just works" nature will change your mindset, even if all of the politics behind it didn't.
