/ 29 August 2005

Google starts talking

Google has thrown its considerable weight into the burgeoning market for internet telephony, or voice messaging as it is now being called.

Google has announced its own voice messaging service, Google Talk, which uses voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and can also be used for instant messaging (IM).

Google Talk, which requires one of Google’s free Gmail web-mail accounts, is the latest attempt by the largest search engine to muscle its way further into internet services that compete with Yahoo!, Microsoft’s MSN and AOL’s AIM and ICQ. All four of these IM services have rolled out voice messaging, allowing users to talk to their contacts instead of typing text messages.

Google Talk has superb voice quality, even using a Vodacom 3G card, on which other VoIP services such as Skype are less than perfect.

Google’s interface is refreshingly simple, and offers no multiparty chat and other add-ons that are now de rigueur in IM services, including displaying advertising.

But to use Talk, one of Google’s Gmail accounts is required. This remarkable service — also technically in beta, or prerelease — was by invitation only, until Google opened it for the Talk launch.

Gmail users are shown relevant advertising based on the content of their e-mails, but this is done by computer software, Google says, hoping to assuage privacy advocates who are up in arms. Gmail is by far the best web-mail service currently on the market. It offers two gigabytes of free storage — it launched with one gigabyte, which at the time was a thousandfold that being offered by Microsoft’s Hotmail or Yahoo! — and stores messages to look like a conversation.

Earlier in the week, Google also released version two of its Desktop Search, which no longer needs a browser and runs in a sidebar application or floating search field on the desktop. It now also provides news and stock-price feeds, e-mail notifications, weather reports, photos and ”what’s hot” on the web.

This is clearly an attempt to bypass the internet browser and place Google directly on to the computer desktop — or on to a floating bar somewhere on it. The application is similar to the Dashboard in Apple’s new iteration of its Mac OS 10.4 operating system, allowing for small programs to run.

In another significant development, Skype — which is the current VoIP poster child — says it will allow its free service to be built into websites and software applications such as media players and online games.

Skype is able to open its services — unlike all the major search and portal sites — because its aim is not to drive viewers back to its website. It also offers a facility to place calls to normal telephone lines at very cheap rates.