Google Talk Is Live

By Nathan Weinberg
Expert Author
Article Date: 2005-08-24

Ladies and gentlemen, check out Google Talk, instant messaging done by Google, and done right with an open protocol. Sign in with your Gmail account. Installing…

Spread The Word. Google Talk Is Live.

Editor's Note: Last night, Google launched their instant messaging service, pushing them closer and closer to being a full-fledged portal. Discuss Google's latest utility at WebProWorld.

Thanks to Matt Walters for making sure I knew.

Lots of good stuff here. The memory footprint is very small (7-10 megabytes in my usage). I was running Photoshop, Windows Media Center (Mets killed tonight), Bit Torrent, AOL Explorer, Outlook and both AIM and Gtalk, and my system is doing fine. Additionally, my router and firewall didn't need any configuration. It just works.

You can automatically add and invite Gmail contacts. You can rename contacts to reflect their real names (a great feature in AIM Triton, which I use) and the names are reflected in the IM window (which Triton does not do). You can list your IM status as basically anything, and I'm already seeing people using it to send funny messages.

Google Talk can remove the need for your Gmail notifier, since it does that and lets you click through to check new emails. It saves your chat history. It plays sounds when you are in a different window, and has a notification box for when somebody IMs you while you're doing something else.

Now, the cool stuff:

Go right ahead and plug in your microphone, because Google Talk lets you talk, and really, really well.

Making a call in Google Talk is as simple as clicking the "Call" button. Click, and you're doing voice chat. Amazingly, its bandwidth light. Matt told me (and he told me, not typed to me) that he wasn't seeing his usage top 10k, and Google Talk wasn't even the only web program he was using. I had an open Bit Torrent client uploading 70% of my bandwidth, and I saw no hiccups.

Voice quality is excellent. No problems. Lag is almost nonexistent (less than half a second). You can have up to four active phone conversations, but can only talk to one person at a time. Everyone else is on hold.

A quick aside: When you are on hold, the program does nothing to address that fact. Now, besides that Google needs to add a notification, why not a cool feature: On Hold Music. Wouldn't it be great if we could configure our Google Talk with hold music, a very small MIDI file that plays in a loop when on hold? That would be superb.

Make sure to get yourself a microphone (and it doesn't have to be decent, mine isn't), because everyone will want to try out this feature.

Next up: Compatibility. Google Talk uses the Jabber/XMPP protocol, and that means you can contact people on any client that supports the service (Trillian users have to buy the pro version). Google has put together a useful chart:

Client	Windows	OSX	Linux	IM other Google Talk users	Voice calls to other Google Talk users	Cost
Google Talk						Free
Adium						Free
GAIM						Free
iChat						Included with OSX
Psi						Free
Trillian Pro						$25*

What does this mean? It means that I will actually be using Google Talk. See, I was uneasy about adding another IM client, but since GTalk has a built in base of people I can chat with, plus easy voice chat, I'm in, at least for the short haul. I'm thinking Google hopes their move will force AIM, MSN Messenger and Y!M to support the open standard, which would have the dreadfull (!) effect of making life easier.

If you'd like my IM name, just say so in the comments and leave yours in the "Email" field of the form.

Some interesting stuff from the FAQ:

You can invite an unlimited number of Gmail users to download Google Talk and get added to your Friends list. If you invite someone who doesn't already have Gmail, we'll include an invitation to that as well, since they'll need a Gmail username and password to use Google Talk. The number of non-Gmail users you can invite at any one time is determined by the number of Gmail invitations you have left in your account, which you can see on the invite screen. We try to make sure users have lots of Gmail invitations to give out, but if you run out, please be patient. Normally, users get more Gmail invitations within a day or two.

Google Talk currently does not encrypt chats or calls. But we are working hard to make many improvements to Google Talk while it is in beta, and we plan to fully support encryption of chats and calls before our official release.

And from the Developer FAQ:

Google Talk supports XMPP with the beta release. We plan to support SIP in a future release. Additionally, we will evaluate other protocols as appropriate, to continue to deliver on our commitment to open communications.

Today, Google Talk supports the following standard voice codecs: PCMA, PCMU, G.723, iLBC. We are also evaluating the Speex codec. We also support codecs from Global IP Sound: ISAC, IPCMWB, EG711U, EG711A

As a first step towards fulfilling our commitment to federation, we will federate with EarthLink and Sipphone, service providers who share our belief in enabling user choice and open communications.

We do not have details at this time on when federation will be enabled. But we are working closely with Earthlink and Sipphone to federate EarthLink's Vling service and Sipphone's Gizmo Project with the Google Talk service as quickly as possible, while offering the best possible user experience.

We look forward to the Google Talk client supporting Linux and Mac OSX in the future.

UPDATE: Adam reports on how to embed Google Talk in your Desktop Sidebar:

You can run an ‘embedded' form of GTalk within the Google Desktop sidebar. Exit GD, wait a few moments, then restart it. Click the little down-arrow at the top right, select ADD/REMOVE PANELS, and check off Google Talk.

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About the Author:
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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