Will Google Talk Be a Failure?

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Although it has excellent voice capabilities, Google Talk, in its current form, doesn?t stand a chance against competitors, such as AOL IM, Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger. The last two have already responded to Google Talk by launching two new versions.

MSN Messenger has reached version 7.5, and Yahoo Messneger with Voice has introduced version 7.0.0.437.

For the users used to emoticons, funny animations, games and the possibility to access from the IM client?s interface services and applications, Google Talk is more like an exotic curiosity that goes against the trend.

The public expects their IM clients to offer more and more communication features, not some spartan interface, which doesn?t even have an integrated search field or a button that allows access to the Blogger.

Google has chosen to promote Google Talk as an extension to Gmail. If you have a GMail account, you also have access to Google Talk, but that?s not enough to grab market share from AOL, Yahoo and MSN.

Google Talk, integrated in Google Desktop, is an interesting service, but I don?t see the users giving up on their emoticons and going for Google Talk just because it has better voice support than Skype. If the next version doesn?t come with some changes, Google Talk has little chances of causing problems to Skype.

If Google had in mind to make Google Talk a product for the fanatic GMail users and for those who IM means only voice, then it has successfully achieved that objective, but if Google Talk wants to become mainstream, then its journey has just begun.