After having watched Microsoft enter new markets with bland first release products, it’s odd to see Google do the same thing.
There will be several hundred stories written about Google Talk today. 99.9 percent of them will gush fawning admiration over the IM chat and voice client being made available for users.
Phooey.
First the basics. You can chat, or you can talk, using this beta version. Users will need to use a Gmail login to play with the Talk client. Google notes in the FAQ that it does not log chats or calls.
But it’s a boring interface, notable only for its use of the Google colors, running on top of a Jabber server. It fits in well with the uncluttered and direct design scheme of the main search page. It’s useful, but unexciting. The same company that came up with Gmail came up with this?
For anyone who’s followed the tech industry for longer than a couple of years, Google seems to be doing what Microsoft has done many times in the past. Microsoft would enter a market that already had one or two good products in place, and release a competitive offering that was like those products, but not nearly as good.
Then Microsoft would release version number two, and the trade journals would note how Microsoft is “catching up” or “making gains” on the market. By version three, Microsoft dominates the market, with the previous leaders either acquired or clinging to dwindling market share.
Google Talk looks like a Microsoft version one product. Yahoo and AOL have voice with their IM clients, plus a lot of content to feed their established user bases, which number in the millions. There will be some curiosity about Google Talk, and definitely a lot of downloads. Google, like Apple, gets some serious buzz when it releases a new tool.
I’m going to wait for version 2. That’s where things will start to get interesting.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
