Instant Messaging and Trashing Google

July 24th, 2006 at 2:39 pm

I dont think these results are counting the built in chat on Gmail’s site. That’s what I use, I never. Ever. Will download Gchat, but I use it all the time.

July 24th, 2006 at 2:41 pm

Likewise .. I do 95% of my chatting using the integrated chat in gmail

July 24th, 2006 at 2:42 pm

Is Google’s strategy really to provide a downloadable IM client? I know they have one, but is that their strategy? Most people I know use the chat feature embedded in Gmail, and with the acquisition of GTalkr, one has to wonder if their strategy is, in fact, to provide a robust IM client that runs in the browser. That would be my bet.

July 24th, 2006 at 2:54 pm

I think Jon is spot on. I have friends on all the networks; very few of them use or are fond of the (perceived to be bloated and ad-heavy) AIM client. I personally use both Trillian and the chat client built into Gmail, and a great many of my (admittedly largely geek / Bay Area) friends use Trillian or other IM aggregator programs. [Disclaimer: I am employed by Google, but I don't work on anything related to the chat stuff]

July 24th, 2006 at 3:07 pm

Actually, I never use GTalk in GMail. I only use the desktop version. Personally, the desktop version is more usable. I also tried using both at the same time and if you do that then strange things happen — you get your chats in GTalk in GMail but not on desktop GTalk.

I do agree — very few of my friends use GTalk. Almost everyone I know uses Yahoo! IM and of course, because of that, I use Yahoo! IM as well.

Perhaps, Google should think of doing something like Meebo, Goowy, etc. and consolidating the IM tools. I think that would be a better strategy than going at it alone.

July 24th, 2006 at 3:18 pm

Michael, is there a point to all the Google-trashing? This is far from the first time you’ve indulged in it. Perhaps you are just being hip by going against some kind of imaginary “common wisdom.” They’re popular, so you bash them out of some kind of need to root for the underdog. Am I wrong? Whence springs your bias?
In any case, I use Miranda and chat with friends over Yahoo, MSN, and Google Talk. When I initiate a conversation and have a choice of providers for a given contact, I use Google Talk because I can search the conversation in Gmail later, something that comes in handy almost every day.

July 24th, 2006 at 3:31 pm

Ron - I can see your frustration and seriousness in morally questioning Google trashing…but wait it is okay to trash Microsoft but not Google??

July 24th, 2006 at 3:34 pm

Gmail and Gchat is for geeks and not for MSNers and other IMer chatters.

July 24th, 2006 at 3:37 pm

I, too, use the Gtalk embedded within Gmail a majority of the time. Cutting this out of the stats definitely is causing some skewing of the numbers, as all the friends I know also chat through Gmail - even the ones who use non-Gmail services as their primary IM.

July 24th, 2006 at 3:39 pm

Hate to say, “I told you so”, but…

http://www.martingordon.org/bl.....listening/

July 24th, 2006 at 3:44 pm

Ha. NOBODY uses iCQ anymore?
Ok. I don’t use it too. But it was huge in the past. Where is iCQ ?

July 24th, 2006 at 3:47 pm

Where’s the money in this market? Usage statistics can be distracting.

* the digital native kids - who are probably the biggest users but want it all free, will ignore ads. Dad’s not going to support them for long.

* the geeks - who also want it free, and will block and ignore ads. They’ll find some hacktastic way to communicate that it takes a techie brain to understand. Good for them.

Nope, the money isn’t there. It’s the mainstream. But they won’t be doing this until there is a real, universal network. And they’ll pay if it’s cheaper than their phone company. The company that charges reasonable rates and is able to guarantee service levels will win.

July 24th, 2006 at 4:16 pm

Funny, I half expected it it to be 53,651.

Seriously, why are you all surprised and skeptical that it’s so low? You know what Google should do? Forget about IM. It’s already too fragmented and nobody wants a new player. They’re wasting their time.

July 24th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

I didn’t know Google had an IM client. It makes me wonder if it’s any good.

I like most of their other stuff - it’s all at least minimally competent - how bad would their IM client have to be to achieve such a low adoption rate? I wonder if it’s possible to achieve this low an adoption rate if one actually tried to do it. I mean, 80% of their users would have to be the engineers that built it, TechChrunch users, and third-party vendors.

That said, I guess it’s possible that at least one of the higher-ups just said, “No IM right now - it’s not important to us at all, just lay low, sit back, relax, you’ll catch some heat, but don’t shake things up - I’ll make sure you get rewarded.” Happens all the time - it’s just difficult to believe that Google is this incompetent at anything. Sometimes things are always what they seem at first glance.

July 24th, 2006 at 4:27 pm

Google’s product marketing machine is an amateur operation. There is obviously no coherent product strategy. Can anyone honestly say that Google will or will/not invest in updates to Google Talk or Maps or Earth or Base or any number of other products?

It is actually quite funny and ironic that for all the engineering brilliance, google is still amateurish at business strategy.

July 24th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

Microsoft proved with Passpor that having a leading Inernet destination (and a monopoly) is not enough to build succesful market share, and that throwing a service out there and see if the dogs eat it is not by itself a good strategy - I mean it’s not a strategy at all.

Google may also be proving that in addition to that, building a decent service doesn’t necesarily add to the results. I agree with Gordon Mohr that we’re measuring products with a big difference in the time they’ve been around, but don’t forget that as Google may grow on this market, so may the other already well-established players.

What this also defines are the barriers to entry on many of the markets Google is entering. If all-mighty Google can only scrap a tiny piece (email, maps, base, im and so on), imagine what it’d take a startup to enter and succeed on any of these markets. Yet, we’ve seen the YouTubes, the Diggs, the Skypes and the Technoratis make it thorugh some markets that might have been dominated by the big players. So yeah, interesting things are happening, and Google is still not much than a search box and an ad machine - and a darn good one at those two!

July 24th, 2006 at 4:37 pm

I think on that list we would actually be above Gtalk!

July 24th, 2006 at 4:41 pm

Also, for those that don’t know, AIM is very popular in the US, with Yahoo slightly behind. But outside the US you won’t find more than 10 people on AIM. Despite the Valley centric view of the web, most of the world’s internet users are not in the US.

July 24th, 2006 at 4:48 pm

I continue to use Gtalk because it’s integrated with Gmail and my personalized search as well as available on my Blackberry. When I’m out and about, any search or conversation I have on my Blackberry is stored along with anything I do on the desktop, all searchable when I inevitably return to the office. Not to say others don’t have some or all of the same functionality, but it works for me.

July 24th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

How many more times shall we see this ‘open system’ vs. ‘closed system’ dilemma to understand, that:
1. Closed system has a threshold and critical mass, but pays off by customer loalty FOR SOME TIME (only)! In the end - customers leave it for the sake of OPEN system. Need examples? Apple or Sun hardware + Unix vs. PC-Microsoft , AOL vs. the Internet … etc. etc. etc.
2. In the end - the users DO migrate. They migrate to the most usable product meeting their needs in a real way.

It’s some kind of a basic principle…

July 24th, 2006 at 5:50 pm

I like google talk, but they dont have the client for osx. I hate the fact that every other chat platform is crowded with features only a teenager needs. Google Talk kept it simple and for that I thank them. But even when I do have my gmail open, I notice no one from my contacts is every online with it.

July 24th, 2006 at 6:04 pm

The best feature of GoogleTalk is the gmail integration. How come Gmail is still invite only? Only techies use it and they’re already married to AIM. Open Gmail to the world and market that, and Google talk will grow.

July 24th, 2006 at 6:12 pm

Yes, gmail integration is the best. No fancy icons or silly flash pictures, just software that works

July 24th, 2006 at 6:27 pm

I’m surprised at your reaction… you are very well aware how recent google talk has been out, why would you compare it to msn, yahoo, aim?

I have never downloaded the client myself but use the embedded chat on gmail all the time. I like how archived conversations show up in search query. I agree with Nick (#44), they are doing things differently.

I could be wrong here, but I perceive from your earlier posts that you do not appreciate google’s products. TechCrunch is considered a respectable blog, why ruin the reputation through biased rants? just a personal thought..

July 24th, 2006 at 6:37 pm

I have more than 200 people on YM, 300 people on MSN and I sent them all the message about gtalk when it was launched and have tried to make them use it ever since. So far only seven of them ended up using gtalk.

I frequent internet cafes a lot primarily because of DOTA Frozen Throne, and I have yet to see an internet cafe that have even installed gtalk on it.

July 24th, 2006 at 6:43 pm

Come on guys stop this loop. Same cycle every day. Either Om Malik or Rafat Ali or Michael Arrington write about a article and the other 2 and more need to copy. Atleast this not expected from you guys. Only reason the techies come here is for news which is not in other places. We dont want to read the same news 3-5 times with similar comments. Don’t behave like a newspaper where you need to print what others are printing. Sooner or later one of you will get dropped off from someone’s RSS. Shot term user gain wont take your site anywhere.
-V

July 24th, 2006 at 6:51 pm

do a statistically valid poll of gmail users to find out how many real users there are (including embedded chat). you have enough readers to get this done… now i’m curious.

July 24th, 2006 at 7:31 pm

This article reminds me of another I read about an analyst who has a sell rating on GOOG. His stipulation is that Google is spending a huge amount of cash on all these new projects and their business model is “throw it on the wall and see if it sticks.”

the results of gtalk seems to prove his theory right. Google is great at search but are they a one trick pony? Is everyone buying GOOG stock expecting too much? What if their gpay, desktop, online apps, etc etc don’t pan out…then you’re looking at a 100+ million market cap for a PPC search engine.

July 24th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

i use the gmail chat through the web browser all the time. and its mighty useful too! one login does it all. since the gchat desktop version is fairly bare, id rather prefer to use the browser edition! for the desktop chat software i prefer yahoo over msn. msn seems too clossy, while yahoo has been very good with usability - i like the yahoo set of features since long. the move to open up the IM by the major companies like yahoo and MSN is a welcome decision. i hope that everyone is truly free to interconnect like email! open standards is the way to go anyways. tired of propreitary stuff by MS and co.

anyways - coming back to chat
- the voice quality on the standalone version of gchat is amazing, something thats not rivalled by yahoo and msn.
- skype does a good job now with both video and voice.
- yahoo does a good job with all the 3 but not good in any single one.
- msn is not bad in video and voice.

July 24th, 2006 at 8:32 pm

Google hasn’t been as successful with other products as compared to its Search. Even there it hasn’t been successful with its Blog Search etc.
It seems to be introducing products for the joy of introducing them. Better product management is required and they should try to follow up on the beta releases faster and release them as a product quicker. Orkut hasn’t had any improvements in the last couple of years and even GTalk has remained the same since its introduction. (I am not talking about the bug fixes and the minor corrections which keep happening, but major releases.) Maybe, they have to change from a typical engineering driven company.

July 24th, 2006 at 9:05 pm

While it may be valid to say that google managed a fair showing just by coming in fourth, this is not the real story here. Once, in the distant past, when I worked at Yahoo the internal joke was that we could copy any cool idea out on the net and just by putting a link to the cloned service on the MyYahoo homepage make the new offering instantly the second or third-largest service in the category. If google’s other services suck so much that it can’t leverage its massive central role as the search engine of choice to get people to use the services then what exactly does that say about the emporer’s fashion sense?

If you take away search and ad placement (yes, that is a very, very big “if”) you are left with google maps and everything else. Google Maps is third in its category at the moment but destined for fourth if Microsoft puts out a decent maps service in Windows Live. After these three services are accounted for then fourth place _is the best google has_ out of all of its remaining services. When you dive into other “flash in the pan” internet activities like news, shopping, social networking, blogging, photos, and other services you will discover that google drops out of the top ten in most cases.

We are not talking about new services here either. Several of the minor google properties have been slowly failing and fading into obscurity for four or five years. I think it is quite telling that no one at google has the balls to take these services out behind the barn for the “old yeller” treatment, admit the failure, and move on to a second try. Even Microsoft has the humility to recognize its failures and try again.

July 24th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

Rarely have I read a post which so hilariously refuted its own hypothesis. “Comscore does not include Google Talk usage within Gmail itself (where it is embedded)”. Precisely. The point is that Google Talk’s integration in Gmail, as many people have pointed out, makes it unnecessary to run an another annoying and redundant panel. I suggest you use your head and figure out a real analysis.

July 25th, 2006 at 12:30 am

Am I the only one who think it’s a bit silly that you seem to think GMail/GTalk is so popular just because all you tech-savvy people use it?

The big mass out there do not use GMail/GTalk, they do not read sites like techcrunch, they probably dont even use a chat software at all. Those who do will stick with what they are handed, and in this case it would be one of the top 3 depending on which broadband provider they have.

I see this all the time when Google-lovers stand up to defend Google. Look outside your bubble and realize the big group of people who just USE the Internet are not the slightest interested in Ajax, Web 2.0, new technology etc - they just use the first service that is handed to them and sticks with it until something better is handed to them.

I like Google’s search and Ad services, in fact I haven’t used anything else for years. The search engine is superior to anything else IMO, but the fact so many use MSN search, AOL search etc proves my point.

My 5 cents.

July 25th, 2006 at 1:37 am

Does Google really care? I’m sure they built it so workers could chat internally and then released it out to the public in case they wanted to use their Gmail accounts for chatting too.

If you notice, they don’t even promote it within Google Pack by default.. this shows how much of a sub product this really is.

July 25th, 2006 at 2:07 am

Seems a lot of folks are into dissin Google ‘product strategy’ - whatever that is supposed to be. I’m not buying it. I’m not buying that Google product strategy/marketing or anything else is ‘bad’. They may release a crap product every once in a while - in between their sensational products - but that doesn’t earn a ‘bad’ or ‘disorganized product strategy’ label.

I have a feeling that the critics in this case are looking at Google’s product marketing, finding it doesn’t match Microsoft’s, and automatically assuming it’s bad, because most folks, I think would say (incorrectly), that Microsoft’s marketing was good/great and should be replicated. I beg to differ.

When I look at Google - when I think Google - I think ‘innovation’, I think ‘tools’, I think ‘the future of the internet’, ‘the future of computing’ - i.e. Google is working towards building ‘the operating system of the internet’. Microsoft had Windows, and Google has a web of web services/tools/platforms/technologies that enable the internet - that enable computing in the 21st century.

This product strategy looks a little bit different than Microsoft’s - it’s not as obvious. Microsoft’s product strategy was about enforcing and celebrating their monopoly with ties-in and myriad other deceptive and devious trade practices. They had that luxury because computing was so young. We all knew what they were doing ahead of time.

With the internets, though, the game has changed. Google needs to provide interoperability in their individual tools, but you’d better believe there are a whole bunch of really smart, highly-paid people at the Googleplex planning very carefully exactly how Google is going to take over the future of computing. The longer they can keep people from figuring out exactly what they’re trying to do, the better. This is not a 3-year ROI we’re talking about - you need to think more like 20 or 30 years ROI. Now, you’re getting the picture. Think 10,000 or 100,000% returns.

Do you see Google Earth, or do you see the beginnings of an advanced location-based services platform that can easily integrate with third party tools? Do you see a crappy spreadsheet app, or do you see a tremendous cash cow of online Google Office, ready to be utilized by a burgeoning global audience? Yes, at first glance, a lot of Google’s apps seem to be going off in different directions - something us geeks used to praise companies for doing (R&D, anyone?) - but if you look a little closer you might see the next evil monopoly coming down the pike. And this one has three heads.

July 25th, 2006 at 2:55 am

gtalk within gmail and via adium.
i use it all day long.

July 25th, 2006 at 4:25 am

The blackberry version of gtalk is absolutely fabulous. The problem is that there’s no one to talk to.

July 25th, 2006 at 7:18 am

I don’t use anything other than Google Talk now, I even deleted all other messengers from my machines. I also only use the built-in Gmail client, I don’t really know anyone who uses the actual application. My clients and friends from all over the world switched to Google Talk and Skype. I doubt those numbers are accurate, and even if they are not, who cares? Google Talk is the best, no IM service can compete with it. Sad to see the that TechCrunch is still in the same anti-Google spirit.

July 25th, 2006 at 8:07 am

There was also a good article in BusinessWeek last month that trashed Google on Gmail, Finance, Orkut, etc., and provided some nice numbers and a nifty chart.

http://alexcastro.typepad.com/.....lity_.html

July 25th, 2006 at 11:26 am

I like many here also only use Google Talk via Gmail. Maybe thats still insignificant? Who knows (comsScore certainly doesn’t). I only recently (two months) started using the account via the Gaim client. Is comsScore counting other clients???

July 25th, 2006 at 11:37 am

BTW, Gtalk team won the “Founders Award” at Google recently, so there is some accountability going on over there

July 25th, 2006 at 12:16 pm

Actually, I use GMail & GTalk to keep contact with my very close friends.
Gmail replace for good the others web based emails, like yahoo or hotmail.
They services are great, fasters, no flash ads, cross browser, the gtalk embedded is fantastic, the concept of “off record” conversation is totally cool, and automagically saves my conversations, what can I said…

I’m not afraid with these numbers, ppl will find the right path when yahoo & hotmail lack of innovation and pushes ads to pay the large bandwith for the been on the top of that list.

My 2 cents.

ET.

July 25th, 2006 at 12:41 pm

my skype client says there are 5.3 million users online at the moment. this is more than google talk’s unique visitors for month. can’t estimate skype’s unique visitors but guess it is between yahoo and aim maybe