In it's ever increasing endeavors to
lure users to its services, search engine giant Google Inc. has announced plans
to join its popular Gmail e-mail service with its Google Talk Instant Messaging
service. By combining services Gmail users will be able to see a list of their
Google Talk contacts and will be able to tell whether a contact is available
for Instant Messaging. Google hopes that by combining services it will make it
easier for users to stay in contact and will draw more users to both its Gmail
and Google Talk services.
Of course the hopes for Google are that by increasing the user base of these services it will also increase its income from advertising, from which it profited $1.5 billion on sales of $6.1 billion in 2005. All in all, it’s a win-win situation, or as close as you can get to one in this day and age. The user gets increased functionality of free services and the draw to invite their friends and family members to use the services, and Google in return gets more ads displayed which of course equals increased revenues. Page ads I can deal with, as long as they don't resort to pop-up/under ads, I won't complain.
According to google vice president of product management Salar Kamangar, the new integration of Google Talk features will begin showing up in Gmail accounts on Tuesday and should be available to all Gmail users within the next few weeks.
News source: KTVB.com / Associated Press
Of course the hopes for Google are that by increasing the user base of these services it will also increase its income from advertising, from which it profited $1.5 billion on sales of $6.1 billion in 2005. All in all, it’s a win-win situation, or as close as you can get to one in this day and age. The user gets increased functionality of free services and the draw to invite their friends and family members to use the services, and Google in return gets more ads displayed which of course equals increased revenues. Page ads I can deal with, as long as they don't resort to pop-up/under ads, I won't complain.
According to google vice president of product management Salar Kamangar, the new integration of Google Talk features will begin showing up in Gmail accounts on Tuesday and should be available to all Gmail users within the next few weeks.

I found that none of my friends used it and stuck to MSN, so theres no point in me having it
Seems about right.
I find the buzz over this feature silly. I wake up this morning...perform my usual tech search on my favourite news search engine (google fwiw), and every single newspaper in the country seems to publish the news of Google merging IM w/ email. Hotmail has done this since late 2003...and last year integrated Web Messenger. Why is this big news?
PS: When will google add more features into talk? it doesn't even have emoticons for crying out loud :|
It's got voice chat. It's got text chat. It can e-mail a record of the chat to your gmail acount. It's free. What more do you want?
They'll hopefully add it soon though, along with file transfer (which I personally don't care for).
anyway great step on google
Hotmail has done this for year's. Thank's to 'Google Talk' we have gone back in time.
It's like buying a simple, no colour, no feature Nokia from 5 year's ago and using it today. In this day and age people like having Mobile TV, Mobile Music, Text Messaging, Games, Picture Messaging, Video Messaging, Emoticons. It let's them express themselves which Google Talk definately does not do.
like with IM, i don't want a fancy looking IM program that has all these "amazing" features that i don't actually use. I only use IM for conversations that are more urgent than email... so Google Talk does tha job
If we made a poll to see how many people care about this and think it appropriate to be on the front page. I bet it would be like 80-90% saying it is relevant, and 10 percent saying it's boring.
NOt to mention stuff like the " Display MSN Today when Messenger starts.." and the "Allow Microsoft to collect anonymous info.. " and the likes which are enabled by default. Your typical user will never think to go disable these annoying "features".
I like this better. Some of us are not allowed to install software at work and this comes in handy.
They should bring in the new features for every language!
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