Google Talk is Up and Running

Wednesday August 24, 2005

Well, look what I found! Google Talk is here. It's an instant messaging service plus that enables "you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world." The only hitch? You have to have a GMail user account and password. So if you don't have a GMail invite, you might want to start sucking up to your various friends and acquaintances to get one to actually use Google Talk.

I'm interested in the free phone call bit. Here's what Google Talk has to say about that: "Calls are made through your computer using the latest voice technology; all you need is an Internet connection, a microphone and a speaker. If you don't have a speaker or built-in microphone, you may want to consider buying a headset, which will also provide the best voice quality when using Google Talk....To talk or IM with your friends for free, both you and your friend must download Google Talk and sign in with your Gmail usernames. You can send your friends an invitation to download Google Talk by clicking the “Add friend” link. If your friends don't already have Gmail, we will also include an invitation to create a Gmail account." (emphasis mine)

So if one person has a Gmail account, then they can just invite all their friends and those people will all get Gmail accounts as well. Nice. That will save some gratuitous groveling.

Here's a few more highlights from the Google Talk FAQ Page:

You can invite an unlimited number of Gmail users to download Google Talk and get added to your Friends list.
The downloadable Google Talk client is not compatible with Macintosh or Linux systems at this time (it's still in beta).
Google Talk currently does not encrypt chats or calls. But we are working hard to make many improvements to Google Talk while it is in beta, and we plan to fully support encryption of chats and calls before our official release.

Find what you need to get started with Google Talk; and let me know what you think in the forums.

Related: Google Facts: Little known facts about Google, the world's largest search engine.