Dear Google:
Let me get this straight. We have AIM. MSN. Yahoo. ICQ. IRC. None of which interoperate with each other. The presence and incompatibility of which has led to the development of several multi-protocol IM clients that consumers have demanded as a way to simplify their chatting lives. Which doesn’t fix the problem of interoperability (if I only have an AIM account, I can’t use it to talk to somebody on MSN, for example. Even if I have a multi-protocol client like Trillian or Adium). I have multiple IM accounts with different services that I have to remember the screenname and passwords for evey time I set up a new client or a new computer.
And now Google, everyone’s favorite tech company, comes along and makes things MORE complicated, with ANOTHER IM system that doesn’t interoperate with existing chat services??
Now, I hear this Google Talk thing is being run on a Jabber server, and according to what I’ve heard, that was supposed to indicate that you could use ONE chat client to talk to anyone, on any service, by sending your message to the Google Jabber server, which would rely it, server-side, to the appropriate service. But I downloaded them demo, and apparently, you can only talk to people who have Gmail.
Which means one more chat service. One more chat client (unless you have a jabber-enabled client already). One more account to sign up for and keep track of. One more unnecessary protocol in a market that’s already fragmented and frustrating due to a plethora of incompatible protocols with entrenched userbases.
Smooth move. This was the last thing the chat world needed.
(Yes, my posts today are a little cranky, but I’m actually not. Go figure.)
More later…
