As I said on Monday Google has gone ahead and launched its Google Talk service. My first response is why? What's the point. Do Google expect people to sign up out of sheer loyalty to all things Google?
At the moment it is invite only as you need a Gmail address, all of which makes it even more pointless. Why would you want to run an IM program that only allows you to talk to a very small sub-set of your contacts?
In the early days of SMS it didn't take off because competing phone companies couldn't talk to each other. It exploded when we had a standard that everyone could use. IM is in the same boat.
Google Talk looks neat. A clean, simple interface with low system overheads. Until I have to run it alongside Skype, AIM, MSN, Yahoo. I have contacts on each. Hopefully there will soon be a Miranda IM plug-in for Google Talk.
