As MSN and Yahoo were battling it out on the Instant Messaging (IM) space-with text, voice and video chat over Internet-the IM market saw a new entrant, who's well aware of the lanes and by lanes of cyberspace. Google recently launched its voice chat client-G-Talk-and claimed that it's going to be a whole new experience. While as of now it is only the beta version that is available for download, it remains to be seen how users adopt and rate G-Talk.

The initial response indicates that G-Talk is a simple but an effective utility, just about 900 KB, which can be downloaded from www.talk.google.com. Once the user logs in with the GMail account, one would be surprised at the plain vanilla interface. The chat loads in a fly, and being integrated with Gmail, it would display new messages along with message subjects and the sender's name once the user logs on to G-Talk. This is indeed a value add, as against other chat clients that display only new mail message, not its subject and headers.

The voice clarity is crystal clear over a standard dial up connection at 52 kbps and over broadband, much better than a traditional phone line. Though Google pitches the superior voice quality, its competitive chat clients like MSN, Yahoo and AIM also offer good voice clarity.

Advantage enterprise?
By launching a messaging utility, Google has become a company with a slew of offerings over the Internet. According to estimates, G-Talk is targeting a territory that is dominated by AOL with its AIM that has 41.6 mn users followed by Yahoo with 19.1 mn users and MSN with 14.2 mn. In this backdrop, Google would have to lure the users of other chat clients, and going by the initial response, it has managed to create enough hype. While it is still early days to comment on the impact it will have on the enterprise space, it looks like a value proposition.

The simple uncluttered interface makes G-Talk a chat client more suitable for professional environment that just serves the purpose-chat and to speak. But again, the simple GUI is both strength and a weakness for G-Talk. For instance, both MSN and Yahoo have done numerous enhancements to their chat clients by upping the visual appeal. But the visual appeal comes with a bargain, as both the latest versions of Yahoo and MSN need decent hardware to run smoothly. On the system requirements front, G-Talk surely has the edge as it can run on simple systems.

Meanwhile, the current level of IM usage among the enterprises is still fuzzy. For instance, large enterprises use traditional VoIP phones for communications, rather than IM. Today most of the Indian SMBs use IM for intra office communication between various branch offices and in the bargain many companies have cut down on their STD bills. But most of the IM usage is predominantly text chat interactions and users need to migrate to the next level, using the voice component of their IM chat clients.

Broadband and IM usage
In recent times, the telecom sector in the country is witnessing huge traction and as a result both land line and mobile connections are increasing by the day. Moreover, with the advent of co-location model by telecos, affordable broadband DSL connectivity has become a reality. The case in point is the BSNL 250 kbps DSL connectivity at Rs 500 per month. Such offerings will drive internet-based applications like voice chat in the days ahead.

With this reality, the size of chat clients becomes immaterial, as users will not mind downloading a 10 MB application that will take just about three minutes on a DSL connection. Hence, looking at the current dynamics, G-Talk has to prove that its chat client is totally different from others, apart from the voice quality and size of the package. Many analysts aver that G-Talk will ultimately become a fat client in the days ahead, as it will slowly start adding functionality like video, skins and the like. Meanwhile, it looks like in the immediate future, the traditional IM client vendors would not bother too much about G-Talk. But in the eventuality of more users signing up G-Talk, they would be forced to re-look at their own IM packages and tune it as per the user demands.

Shrikanth G in Chennai

Page(s)   1