Google Talk

Google Talk is a service offered by Google for Voice over IP and instant messaging. Google Talk beta was released on August 24, 2005 and consists of both a service and a client used to connect to the service. Unlike some other instant messaging services, Google Talk uses an open protocol, XMPP, for the IM part, and it encourages the use of clients other than their own in connecting to the Google Talk service.

As of the launch date, the Google Talk client is available only for Windows (2000, XP, Server 2003); users of other operating systems are provided with instructions for various popular Jabber clients, such as Psi or Miranda IM for older versions of Microsoft Windows, iChat or Adium for Mac OS X, and Gaim or Kopete for Unix-like systems. However, any program capable of using the Jabber protocol is sufficient, although the voice over IP service only works with the Google client. Google has released the VoIP portions as Jingle.

History

The idea of a Jabber-based Google IM service was proposed by Eoban Binder on the website Applexnet.com on August 23, 2004. Exactly one year later, after the rumor of a Google-branded "communications tool" service had been reported by the New York Times and detailed by the Los Angeles Times on August 22 2005, the subdomain talk.google.com was found to have an active Jabber server. Two methods of logging into the server were discovered soon after and the ensuing response by eager bloggers revealed to numerous others how to login before the official release by Google. On the evening of August 23, many logged-in users using port 5222 to connect were disconnected and unable to log back in. Users using port 5223 to connect were still able to log in, and at 04:12:52 UTC those users received a broadcast instant message from gmail.com, an apparently official username used by Google to communicate with their user base, that stated "The broken link has been fixed. Thanks for being our first users!" Port 5222-connectivity was found to have been re-enabled. On February 7, 2006, users signing into Gmail were greeted with a message stating that the Instant Messaging features of Google Talk would be available within the Gmail page at some point in the next few weeks. As of April 2006, all Gmail users are able to turn on and turn off the instant messaging capabilities of the Gmail interface. This is expected to boost Google Talk use significantly.

Technical information

Google has announced that a major goal of the Google Talk service is interoperability. Google Talk uses Jabber and XMPP to provide real-time extensible messaging and presence events, including offline messaging (only through non-Google clients like Adium). On January 17, 2006, Google enabled server-to-server communications, federating itself with any Jabber server that supports the dialback protocol.

On December 15, 2005, Google released libjingle, a C++ library to implement Jingle, "a set of extensions to the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for use in voice over IP (VoIP), video, and other peer-to-peer multimedia sessions." Libjingle is a library of the code that Google uses for peer-to-peer communication, and was made available under a BSD license.

Google Talk does not encrypt the Jabber stream, instead using an undocumented nonstandard way of authenticating to the service, retrieving a token from a secure web server. Other clients than Google's own are required to secure their streams with TLS before sending the password, causing them to stay encrypted throughout the whole session. Google claims that all messages (text and voice) will be encrypted in future releases.

Conversation logs can also now be automatically saved to a special folder in the user's Gmail account; this allows users to search within their chat logs easily, and to have them centrally stored no matter what computer is used to have conversations. Using Google's official client or through gmail.com, it is possible to enable "off the record" mode to prevent either user from being able to log the conversation, although this only affects the Gmail logging system and does not prevent logging by users whose IM client has its own logging capability, such as Gaim. It is important to note, however, that third party clients do not have the ability to go "off the record" at this moment, and all conversations through third party clients are logged into the user's Gmail account.

Offline messages are not supported so far and the configuration options available are very limited.

Criticism, reviews, and bugs

As has become common with many Google beta products, people have been judging and evaluating the beta service as if it were not in beta, instead regarding it the same way they would an ordinary, released product/service.

Early critics of the beta service have pointed out that the client will not log more than 20 lines of text chat or handle offline messages, contrary to Google's goal of storing all information. This objection is no longer valid, since Google Talk now offers the possibility of storing over 2GB of chat logs on the user's Gmail account.

Search Engine Watch argued that the product lacks the "wow" factor associated with the unveiling of other Google products like Gmail or Google Maps. They cite the fact that Google Talk only allows PC-to-PC voice chat, and no connection to the traditional telephony network (PSTN). Several critics have called the product "underwhelming"; others predict more impressive features in the future of Google Talk.

There have also been several bugs reported in the Windows client for Google Talk, including e-mail message-notification unreliability, taskbar notification problems during conversations with more than one contact, and tab-sizing problems. Also it appears that using the escape key to close chat windows does not work if the window has been open for a moderate amount of time. Similarly, the buddy list window, if left un-minimized for a length of time, automatically "maximizes" (to the same size), and has to be "restored" with Windows in order to minimize once again. A bug that has popped up recently, as well, is a buddy list malfunction. All users will appear offline in the Google Talk client, but if a user is, in fact, online, they will show up as online in the user's Gmail account.

Before server-to-server communications was enabled in January 2006, many people criticized the inability of Google Talk to communicate with the larger Jabber network.

There is also no official conference or chat room feature, meaning that users can talk to only one person at a time; however, a user-created Python script enables a chat room to be hosted by users with unused accounts. Users can join multi-user chats on other servers that support them (like conference.ursine.ca) using a Jabber client capable of multi-user chat.

Many critics, while noting its lack of features, are refreshed at the clean look as compared with other instant messengers. This clean look is consistent with many of Google's current projects, from its home page to its mapping service.

Future releases

Google reports that they are working on adding new features, and many clues found within Google Talk's Privacy Policy suggest Google Talk will support file transfers. Google is also planning on supporting SIP in a future release. Google has a good track record of following up on user suggestions in their Gmail product. Unlike with Gmail, Google is not disclosing what features they are working on in general, although a FAQ states that they are working on adding rich text formatting features.

As part of Google's 5% acquisition of AOL on December 20, 2005, Google Talk users will be able to communicate with AOL's market-leading AIM instant messaging service. Google Talk users will not require an AIM screen name in order to communicate with AIM users.

On 16 May 2006, Nokia revealed that the new software for the Nokia 770 Internet tablet would include Google Talk, perhaps using the Tapioca Voice over IP framework.

References

External links

Official Google Talk website
Official blog: Google Talkabout
Google Talk Interoperability Newsgroup
Google Talk Newsgroup
News on Google Talk
Google Talk older versions - All of the old versions from version 1.0.64 to the latest one
Google Opens Talk to Public Jabber Servers