technical solutions and commentary

Yesterday a rumor was going around on the blogosphere that Google was getting ready to launch it’s instant messaging and VOiP client. Apparently this was reported in the LA Times. Today Google launched GoogleTalk Beta. The location to get the beta client is at www.google.com/talk/.

The client is a very small download and the interface is really, really clean. You do need to have a gmail account in order to use GoogleTalk. If anyone wants a free invite to gmail let me know, I have a lot of them to give away.

And if your interested, it looks like GoogleTalk is based upon the OpenSource “Jabber” technology which is an XML-based messaging protocol and provides great fault tollerance on the server side. Google is has really been leveraging OpenSource technology to get a jump start in the areas in which the want to play. This is the same thing that they did with Google Video, where they leveraged the VideoLAN OpenSource code and adapted it to their network services. Looks like this strategy is working well for them and problably saving them a lot of money compared to writing all of these services from scratch such as in closed proprietary systems.

The only disadvantage I see would be that it would be realativly easy for a new player to come into the market, using the same strategy in developing the same types of services, and competing with them. As long as their core search technology stays in the lead I don’t think this would be a great possibility though. Because in the end, it’s still the search results that keep people using Google and any other “add-ons” they are developing.