As widely expected, Google waded into the instant messaging space today with the debut of Google Talk, an IM client that also offers the ability to make voice calls between computers.
The entry sees Google directly competing against the much more mature clients and established user bases of competitors Yahoo and MSN, not to mention its own partner AOL. The move also opens Google up to accusations that it is way off its mission of "to organize the world's information." Heck, Google Talk doesn't even feature a box to let you search for things, as rival products from AOL, MSN and Yahoo do.
Of course, the failure to launch an instant messaging product would leave Google at a competitive disadvantage. In the end, while the company may not like the P word, but a portal Google effectively is.
Personal home pages Google has, in the form of blogs. Email it offers, in the form of Gmail. A personalized home page it gained in May. Offering instant messaging is a natural progression, something many of Google's users may want if not expect. And if Google fails to offer IM, it risks having users turn to a competitor for it.
For its part, Google believes instant messaging does fit in with its overall mission.
"We think an important part of information is communication, so we see this as a little bit of an extension of what we did with Gmail, said Georges Harik, director of product management at Google. "Sometimes you don't want to wait. You want to send it right now. This is one way to address that, as well as with voice."
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