Google Talk

Quite simply, Google is by far the most exciting tech company today.  The number of exciting new products they have produced in the last year or so (not to mention their stock price) shouts this from the mountain tops.  Everyone has raved about their market-ruling search engine for years so when they started expanding into other areas of software development a few years ago many were quite excited to see what they would come up with.  Well, they were anything but disappointed.  The latest example of these developments is the new Google Talk.  Unlike most of Google’s recent announcements, though, Google Talk was greeted with an uncharacteristically lukewarm reception.

Many online pundits are saying that this is because the application doesn’t seem to live up to the expectations that Google has set itself up for when creating new tools.  It doesn’t seem, they say, to have any stand-out features that make it uniquely useful or intelligent in its design, making it seem that it was “just done right.”

Not so fast, I say.  It seems that the “wow factor” that Google Talk has going for it is its open architecture.  There are two aspects here to which I am referring.  The first is Google’s use of open standards in the communication protocols used.  Obviously, this is nothing particularly innovative since Google itself lists the numerous predecessors to which they can connect thanks to the open protocols.  The novel aspect of this is the size and reputation Google brings with it to the IM table.  It is the first of the web juggernauts to release an IM app based on interoperability standards.  With as much influence as Google has on the internet now, they may have the power that the smaller services don’t, to force a reexamination of IM interoperability that has not been seen since the AOL Time-Warner merger.

Unlike the “Big Three” of the IM market today (AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo!), Google seems to have a culture that promotes open and free communication.  Google encourages other IM clients to work with Google Talk.  Logically so, of course, since Google would be almost unable to modify their offering to lock them out anyway, as that would undermine the standard protocol on which they base their service in the first place.  On the other side of this coin, if the other market leaders wanted to work with Google Talk, they would most easily do so by using those same standards, thereby opening their networks not only to Google, but also to the interoperability that the web community has craved for so long.  The history of the IM market is riddled with examples of one IM client hacking into another in the name of open interoperability (rightly so) only to be (foolishly) locked out by the next update, so using open standards would put this cat and mouse game in the past.

The second facet of openness that Google Talk exposes is through Google’s strong developer-facing attitude.  If Google opens up its IM app through APIs the way it did with Google Maps, there is little doubt that it will attract nearly as many developers that will extend the application to do things that even the creative geniuses at Google Labs didn’t think of.  In fact, a powerful API interface is what makes an application and a platform.  (As a side note, this is exactly why opening an application through APIs is a smart idea for all software developers: it allows enthusiastic and devoted users to do some of your value-added development for you, for free.)  This could extend the platform well beyond what Google has right now and could very well be where the wow factor comes from that makes Google Talk the must have application Google Maps and Gmail are.  This formula has worked wonders for Winamp and Firefox with their respective plug-ins and extensions (not to mention their skins and themes).  In fact, in those two examples, some of the most popular user-created add-ins are now included by default as if they were part of the applications themselves.

Given all the positive press and wonderful applications that have grown out of the developer community hacking away at Google Maps, I would expect Google to do nothing less with IM, and that is what makes Google Talk much more than just another IM client…

…but that’s just my opinion.