Hacker News Reader

Comment by maqr | Hacker News Reader

I'll be trying to get my contacts to use Google Talk. It has all the features of Skype, including video conferencing, for free.

View on HN

Unfortunately the desktop client needs some work, and AFAIK it supports only windows.

And another thing I don't like about Google Talk is that last time I tried, it had no support for multi-user video-conferencing. Neither do the free Skype accounts, but I think on Skype you can have a video-conference with up to 4 users.

So if Google is going to put some resources into GTalk, then it will kick-ass (you'll just tell your friends / colleagues to download the client and to use their GMail account for login), or just use the GMail web interface (which currently is more capable than the stable desktop client :)).

Otherwise there is no good alternative to Skype.

Google Talk runs in the browser. I tried it on Windows and Mac without problems. Actually, we found it to be more reliable than Skype at low bandwidths.

I know absolutely nobody who uses Google Talk. Posting on Facebook "Does anyone here really use Google Talk?" there was a roaring silence in response.

I can't for the life of me see why you would go from a minor evil service like Skype/MSN/whatever with a variety of clients to choose from to a monsterous big-brother service like Google Talk.

Aren't we giving Google enough power and dominance as it is?

Edit: To comment on the actual article, it seems to be a mix of supposedly fashionate "Microsoft sucks" attitude, standard "Microsoft is evil" paranoia and some legitimate concerns about future support for non-Microsoft platforms.

IMO the only one worthy of discussion would be the last one.

1) Each gmail user is also a GTalk user. It's very convenient to be able to reach people not using any other IMs through the GTalk's web interface.

2) In corporate environment it's sometimes the only option, due to inability to install 3rd party software.

3) There's a huge advantage of GTalk over Skype - Skype is a P2P protocol. If you send a message to an offline contact and disconnect, he will never receive it unless at some point you are both online. It makes sense for VOIP obviously, but for IM that's just ridiculous.

For the same reason there's no server-side history - no way to reach lot of important information after you reinstall the system, break computer etc.

All my friends use Google Talk since we all have Android phones and use it instead of SMS since it's free.

I've never used the voice/video desktop client though.

Perhaps you're not popular enough on Facebook?

But more seriously, me and most of my contacts have switched to Google Talk as the Windows Live client is very bloated these days and GTalk generally connects faster and is always there as part of Gmail when you log in on any platform on any computer (eg friend's computer, library etc).

Interesting perspective. I consider it UI noise/bloat and it has always annoyed me ever since it was pushed into the gmail UI. When I'm in my mail-client I want to do email and that's it, etc etc.

I thought starting to aggressively add non-core features was one of the key things which made people hate Yahoo and Hotmail? So how is Google doing with gmail these days:

    - Talk. I'm Google Bob. Do you want to chat with this contact?
    - Buzz. Yeah how about that?
    - Whoah! Wait NO we will not let you download this calendar invitation for
      Outlook. Please sign up for Google Calendar or forget about ever responding!
      Teehee
    - OH HEY PLEASE USE CHROME
    - Dude! Dude! I'm Google Voice and you should seriously use me to call!!
    - Oh wait, you're from outside the US? Sorry you cant!!
      I'll just leave the voice UI all here for you though. lol.

IMO it's getting pretty nasty.

Not saying you are wrong, but I never really though about it that way. I value purity and Gmail is getting messy. If Google Talk had been an actual stand-alone application and not ... crummed in stuff I didn't ask for, now then maybe I would use it. Then it wouldn't be invasive UI noise in my mail app.

I use "google talk" by using my own Jabber server. Google talk intergrates with XMPP very nicely. Even video chat works. Google Talks interoperability makes it the best choice for the average consumer.

All of my friends and coworkers use Google Talk. I don't even have MSN! (and I barely use Skype, since my desktop computer doesn't have webcam nor microphone). In the end, I use the videochat feature on GMail, because it actually works pretty well.

I guess it all depends of the people around you.

Good luck doing a job or phd interview on google talk. My understanding is that skype has patents on a myriad of things related to live audio/video. Plus it works really really well and does screen sharing too (which means you can do presentations online). It's not just the network effect here. It's actually a better-than-the-rest product (and i sure hope MS won't make it a mess). Plus, its not less free than gtalk .

Reply on news.ycombinator.com