My 'Pro Google Talk' Rant

[tapo]

Here I go again. Writing a long rant that Neowin's news section has deemed too long to post. I don't know why I get into these things, and I haven't even read it yet. I just kept on typing.

Well... enjoy.

boring. hardly worth front page news.

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.

I don't care for, or use any of those features you just mentioned on my phone. I really don't know anyone who does. My brother, for the longest time, had one of those simple, featureless Nokia phones with 'Snake' on it. Personally, I have a Samsung flip phone.

I don't use it to surf the web, it's too slow, too small, and too expensive. I don't IM people, I don't watch TV (slow, bad quality, expensive) , and I don't listen to music on it. I have an iPod for that. I use it to call people.

When my friends go on AIM, they don't constantly hit the 'Games' button. I don't know anyone with a webcam, or anyone who cares for AOL's streaming radio. When a friend signs on to AIM or MSN, or Yahoo, or ICQ or whatnot, they just want to IM people. They use Myspace or Blogger, so they have no need or interest in the integration with MSN Spaces or Xbox Live.

Now most of them aren't geeks. They're average computer users who bought a $700 HP back in 2002 and like to chat with their friends, surf the web, and play SimCity. They don't have a lot of RAM, and they don't know what to enable and disable when they're installing software. As a result, their taskbar is packed, they're dealing with IM windows that take up a quarter of the screen (@1024x768), and these 'modern' IM programs frequently freeze up their computer to draw the next massive window. Why they're so big, god only knows. AIM does it to look stylish, MSN does it so it can show really big buddy icons.

These ads and lack of focus is how GMail managed to get so far ahead of MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. No banner ads, clean interface, and essentially unlimited storage (with a working spam box!).

Google Talk got it right. No longer do I need to guide friends through setup of Gaim or Trillian, I can just show them Google Talk.

It launches at boot without a performance hit, allows them to IM and voice chat with people, automatically updates, and tells them when they have new email (as most of them have switched from hotmail by now). Everyone I've shown it to has refused to use AIM or MSN again (MSN is a minority usage in my area, I only know about four people who use it. About sixty that use AIM.)

People want simplicity. This is how Firefox caught on instead of Opera or Mozilla Suite, Google caught on instead of portal sites, and the reason that we don't all have videophones in our homes today, instead of the simple, reliable phone line.

Google Talk isn't a step back, it's a brilliant step forward and a focus on what most people actually need. And I commend Google for taking a risk like this in what has become a stagnant and boring market.

Edited February 9, 2006 by tapo

[Night.Hawk]

a display pic should show who you are talking to, not what they can whip out of paint.

I agree 100%. I don't want to see some band's logo, or movie actors, or words that I can't repeat on Neowin. I would love to see a messenger than uses Gravatar type ratings to decide if you want to look at the picture or not.

The ability to block out certain picture ratings and only look at certain types of pictures would rock.

[migo]

So you're saying you really look like diagonal blue lines of various shades?

[dagger]

I do agree with some of the comments made on this thread about the pro's of Google Talk but half the people in this thread were ranting about MSN Messenger being too bloated but I guess they haven't used Windows Messenger :)

[ryokovv006]

So you're saying you really look like diagonal blue lines of various shades?

:rofl: