&ldquo;first there was a three-legged monkey...&rdquo; tag:andthennothing.net,2005:Typo Typo 2007-02-01T07:11:35+00:00 Jonas Bengtsson jonas.b@home.se urn:uuid:4edec573-64b7-40f1-bbdb-0c09deede101 2005-08-23T21:53:00+00:00 2007-02-01T07:11:35+00:00 <p>Google is one of those companies that gets immidiate attention for every little move they make. They are praised even if something they&#8217;ve done is not that innovative. Sometimes it gets a bit tiresome, but mostly Google rumors are quite entertaining.</p> <p>But there is a rumor that I hope is true, <a href="http://www.googlerumors.com/2005/08/22/google-talk-rumors-im-client/">Google Talk</a>, which is supposed to be a IM client with VoIP capabilities scheduled for release tomorrow. The one thing that makes this sound like a good thing to me is that it&#8217;s supposed to be <a href="http://www.jabber.org/">Jabber</a> based. If anyone besides the established IM companies can push Jabber into the mainstream it&#8217;s Google.</p> I think: <ul> <li>there will be a web based (searchable) archive (perhaps part of Gmail)</li> <li>the feature set from <a href="http://www.hello.com/">Hello</a> will be migrated over time (and Hello will be discontinued)</li> <li>the client will not have ads, but the (web) archive will almost certainly have ads</li> <li>it will have VoIP (as reported all over the place) with the ability to call normal phones in the future</li> <li>it will work behind NATs without any configuration</li> <li>it will work with the other IM networks (through transports)</li> <li>entertainment features (avatars, games etc) will be very limited from the beginning (but they are very much needed in the long run for mainstream adoption)</li> <li><span class="caps">RSS</span> will be included in some form (so will a <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a> client)</li> <li>location will play some part</li> <li>video chat will take a while</li> </ul> I hope: <ul> <li>it will play nice with other Jabber servers/clients</li> <li>any extensions to Jabber are open</li> <li>it ends the trend of only supporting Windows</li> </ul> <p>I&#8217;m not sure what the killer feature(s) will be. You cannot start a IM service nowadays without something special. VoIP isn&#8217;t it, since everyone and their dog already have VoIP. A web based archive can be one part (I&#8217;m using IM from different computers so my logs are spread all over the place), and ad free client another. But neither of those are enough to start a migration from <span class="caps">AIM</span>, MSN, and Skype.</p> <p>Let the IM war begin!</p>