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February 26, 2008

Google Talk Adds a Chatback Widget

Erick Schonfeld

38 comments »

gtalk_logo.gifDo you really want random people on the Web IMing you? Google thinks so. Yesterday, it added a chatback widget to Google Talk that lets you put a little badge on your Website or blog linked to your Google Talk account. When you are available, visitors to your site can start an instant message conversation with you. This is a similar idea to all the call-me buttons that have proliferated from startups like Jajah, Jaxtr, Tringme, and GrandCentral (now part of Google). But keeping it to text chat makes more sense. IMs can be ignored easier than a ringing VoIP line.

gtalk-chatback.pngStill, you are really asking to be distracted if you turn this feature on. Or disappointed. What if you put the badge on your site and no one wants to chat?

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 8:41 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. isedb.com

    February 26th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

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  1. Jesus H Christ

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:50 am

    I think this a great addition to google arsenal. This widget will be great especially for etailer sites that already use google checkout since they would be targeting the same consumers. I could see this doing what skype should have done for ebay.

  2. Marzipan from Toledo

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    Meebo has this already.

    on related news… Google Talk takes down their chatback widget from their investor relations site

  3. Carl

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    While it may not have all the features of services such as LiveAgent, one thing it does have is a great price… FREE. Since Google Talk can already log all your chats you also can search through your chats if you use it for customer service. Pretty handy for small ecommerce operations.

  4. CouchTycoon

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:00 am

    I like the idea. I`ll give it a try..

  5. Joel Strellner

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    This is a direct competitor to all of the click to chat / live help services out there. Yet another industry that Google is going to gobble up and create a monopoly - destroying most of the existing businesses in the process.

    How many more industries do we need to see them get into before we make an issue out of their monopolistic nature?

  6. Ryan

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    This reminds me of the ICQ widget from many years ago that let you place your ICQ status on your website. It was popular then, and I can see this really being popular for teenagers with blogs who want to meet their readers.

    This is also a free live support tool for businesses, allowing your customers to contact you directly. It will increase google account signups if this tool gets into widespread use.

    I see myself using this conditionally, where I may post an article, and at the bottom add a footer which invites people to discuss the topic with me further.

  7. Josef Assad

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:08 am

    This ought to be fun… I added this to the download site of the novel I released under a Creative Commons license. Score one for the new media!

  8. Ryan

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:09 am

    @Joel - do you understand the term monopoly? A monopoly suggests that the consumer has no other choices, and that Google is anti-competitive. I fail to understand how a gtalk widget is monopolistic in nature (especially with gtalk’s market share). By their very nature, widgets are competitive because the consumer has choice, and they can be deployed anywhere.

  9. http://yooflix.com/SearchVideo.aspx

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:13 am

    Today is not a good day for this launch.

    http://yooflix.com/SearchVideo.aspx

  10. Konstantin

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:25 am

    Jaxtr provides not only voice calling through our widgets/buttons, but also text messaging, so people have more of a choice. Also, there is never a “ringing VoIP” line with jaxtr. First, it’s your regular phone that rings (and you can choose at any point in time where to route calls to your home, work or mobile phone). Second, our PrivacyShield ensures that your phone rings only for people you have approved, so non-approved callers get routed to a digital voicemail box (kind of like Gmail for voicemails) and you can check the voice messages there at your leisure. And, if the call is from your mom, by all means, approve her, so your phone rings when she calls! Click through on my name above to see how this works . . .

  11. Alex Rodriguez

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:29 am

    Cant find a way to make it work with Google Apps for Your Domain Talk.

  12. CanCar

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:31 am

    This is a free live support tool for businesses, allowing your customers to contact you directly. It will increase google account signups if this tool gets into widespread use.

  13. Alex

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:43 am

    Yes, this is a devastating blow to vendors such as LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN). It was just a matter of time before it happened.
    The JAXTR post (@10) is interesting but we’ll just have to see how viable that business becomes. Now GOOG will move to offer the exact same voice functionality as described by JAXTR through their GrandCentral acquisition but also Live Website Chat. CRUSHING BLOW!!!

  14. Greg

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    @Erick - Ah, you should have put a real chatback widget up there - and don’t worry, I’m sure your reads will want to talk to you :)

  15. EH

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:48 am

    By the way, have you ever heard of penis enlargement cream?

  16. Michiel van Vlaardingen

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:51 am

    We have been using Plugoo quite successfully to run small scale chat support with a GTalk account, so it’s great that Google now offers this. Although I must say that it does not look as inviting to chat with as the plugoo widget.

  17. Jesus H Christ

    February 26th, 2008 at 9:51 am

    all cream once applied works as penis enlargement cream.

  18. Mark

    February 26th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Interesting blog. With the advent of the new consumer, Gen X and Gen Y, I wonder how it will impact the finanical transactions. I recently read an article on the mortgage side of the new consumers by Cary Burch CEO of LSSI. Interesting stats.

    http://www.mortgage-technology.....70419.html

  19. Joel Strellner

    February 26th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    @Ryan Yes, I do understand what a monopoly is and what monopolistic behavior is.

    Just look above, in the 17 posts above, 5 of them mention that it will be used by them/others as a support replacement. That is roughly 29% of these posts. That should be some indicator showing what is about to happen to this industry.

    Google is such a large brand name and most people are so pigeonholed in their products that there is little barrier to entry for people to try it out. Google offering it for free is what will get them market share. Why would you pay for something if you can get it for free?

    Before long, businesses in the click to chat industry are going to go out of business (get deadpooled). Once that starts happening, then you as a consumer start to not have other choices. The fact that they are offering it for free is what makes this anti-competitive.

    Gtalk’s current market share isn’t much, I agree. Give it 6 months and I guarantee with this offering their market share will double in 6 months.

  20. Andrew

    February 26th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    I don’t think you’ll see many businesses use this. Lets be honest here, Google is the Kia of the internet. Cheap and bare bones, good deals but you won’t be caught dead in one. What does it say about your business if you can’t afford to have your own chat solution. This is no different then telling people: “Hey everyone IM me at Arrington on AIM or Techcrunch on YM or penisenlargement@msn.com on MSN or FeedbackTC on GTalk.

  21. ValleyGuy

    February 26th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    lets give credit to meebo for having this like ages ago !!!

  22. Dito

    February 26th, 2008 at 10:42 am

    It does not save your chats with ‘guests’ so there is no record of your conversation.

    It does not show your status for Google Apps for your domain accounts, but it seems to allow you to sign up with a Google Apps account for your domain, provided you create a Google Account ‘username’ (email doesn’t suffice) but even then it doesn’t show your status, so I choose to use an existing email Gmail account.

    With all that said, I think this is a great feature for my business’s website (contrary to what #20 said).

  23. Darren

    February 26th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    This is nothing new. As mentioned above, this already available from other IM vendors.

    I want to add a mark to the wall. Microsoft (surprise!) had this feature before Google.

    http://messengersays.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!5B410F7FD930829E!30835.entry

  24. EH

    February 26th, 2008 at 11:13 am

    Hey, if I start a company that automates irrelevant and spammy blog comments like the mortgage guy’s above, will TC write about me?

  25. john

    February 26th, 2008 at 11:38 am

    meebo.com does this already.

  26. Paul Lopez

    February 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am

    This does not make sense for people over 30. Why do I want to be pinged by the great unknown? This is great for tech support or a business scenario.

  27. Dave

    February 26th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    Great idea on paper, but not implemented in a very user-friendly way. When a chat request comes in from the web click, you get a very ugly url in your Google Talk client that you have to click on to open a web page to do the actual chatting. It can’t be done in the gTalk application, even if installed. Also, the badge does not validate XHTML Strict or Transitional.

  28. Ronald Lewis

    February 26th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    I’ve been waiting for Google to do this and they finally did. Great news.

    I still love Meebo, so I’ll be using them both.

  29. Ben

    February 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    I think it’s a pretty novel concept, my company, http://hab.la has been working on a similar concept for the past year for letting you chat with visitors to your website using Jabber — it has the advantage of letting you chat with your visitors directly from

  30. deralaand

    February 26th, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    It might say about your business…”Hey, I sick of having to pass along insane prices to my customers. For once I would like to be able to save them a dime without taking it in the shorts.”

    Companies routinely rip off each other with over the top pricing schemes, because they know that there will be an end user (most likely many end users) that won’t notice the higher prices. Who here is the unfair advantage taker?

    This won’t work for businesses that need more than one user chatting at a time.

  31. xristhian

    February 27th, 2008 at 7:32 am

    Lo intentaremos..

  32. Raxit

    February 27th, 2008 at 11:53 am

    Nothing wrong if someone is not getting Spammed !
    If one is getting spammed, one option is to be offline from Anonymus chat !

    -Raxit

  33. Raxit

    February 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    Hi,

    I think i found potential Heavy Misuse,
    Just will do PoC after going home,

    Will disclose (damn easy) if success !

    -Raxit

  34. Raxit

    February 28th, 2008 at 2:17 am

    Hmmm…

    if i put chatback widget on my page/blog, anyone can see the “widget code” and can copy paste to wherever they want !!!

    if you have put “Chatback” widget, you may not aware, anyone can put “Your Chat Back Widget (Talk to you) even on the page you MAY NOT WANT” !!!

    PoC here !!!
    http://smartgunda.com/chatback.html
    http://smartgunda.com/chatbackmore.html

    Cheers,
    Raxit

  35. Raxit

    February 28th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

    contact google, let’s see what they reply ? :)
    this may be heavy potential misuse !

    -Raxit

  36. Duncan Rocks!

    February 29th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    “Do you really want random people on the Web IMing you? Google thinks so.” => I love this quote :)

    btw, Duncan Rocks!

  37. David

    March 3rd, 2008 at 9:14 am

    Mark,

    Good article on X and Y from Cary Burch CEO of LSSI. here is another interesting blog on the European component with a post of that information.

    http://www.finextra.com/commun.....px?id=1011

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