View and vote on the article here: Software Review: Google Talk
Software Review: Google Talk| Category | | | Summary | | Months before its release, Google's Instant Messaging/Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (IM/VOIP) application, Google Talk had been somewhat of an enigma. As with many other Google projects, Google themselves never offici |
| | Body | When Google officially announced their IM/Voice Client on August 24, 2005, the public was pleased, excited, and hardly surprised. The majority of savvy Internet users were interested in seeing if Google could compete with the big corporations (such as AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!).
In my opinion, most of Google's products are highly innovative, bringing a more interesting life to the Internet, but Google Talk seems to have fallen short of the high standards that we've come to expect from Google.
Actually, when it comes to desktop applications, Google seems to fall short most of the time. For one thing, they seem to focus too much on the Windows platform. Most of their stand-alone (not web) applications, such as Picasa, Google Talk, Google Desktop, Google Earth, and Google Web Accelerator, are all exclusively for Windows XP or 2003.
Although the current Google-designed GUI (graphical user interface) IM application is solely for Windows, Google made a smart choice. They stuck with their corporate motto and used the Jabber framework. This means that Linux and Mac users can use other non-proprietary clients, such as Psi or gAIM to instant message other users on Google Talk.
However, the Windows exclusivity of the Google Talk voice features presents a problem. The voice encoding and decoding algorithms are proprietary, which means that you need the GUI application to be able to use the voice features, which, as the name implies, is what this product is all about.
Google Talk isn't a complete flop in my eyes, however. The Windows GUI is a very clean and attractive interface. It features a backend into your GMail account to check your messages, and a neat little popup window by your system tray. The visual design of the program is very aesthetically appealing, and I commend Google on that aspect. The options interface and selection of settings in the program is quite easy.
Overall, I'd say that if you use Jabber quite a bit, this is the program for you. However, if you are looking for an intuitive, cross-platform application for voice and text chat, stick to what you've already got in MSN, YIM, and AIM. Google's still got a little further to go to get this one just right.
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: Goatrider)
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