Google Talk Aims For More Users

A few months back, various industry reports indicated that the Google Talk IM and soft phone was near the bottom of the heap in terms of active users and downloads, both. Part of the reason for that might have been due to the fact that Google Talk (or GTalk, as some people call it) was only available to registered Google Mail users. Apparently they’ve changed this rule and opened up the IM.

This is probably a smart move, if they want to be competitive with popular IMs (Instant Messengers) like Windows Live Messenger (aka MSN Messenger), Yahoo! Messenger or AIM Pro. Google Talk is the only one in this list that does not have call-out features, relying on someone else’s software, Talqer, to allow calls to landlines from a computer. Google Talk is also based on an open standard, unlike the other IMs mentioned here. Up until recently, most of these IMs could not intercommunicate, but recent apps and bridging services have changed that. Google Talk, on the other hand, has been behind the curve, at least until GTalk2VoIP came out, which allows it to communicate with MSN Messenger.

I’m not sure whether Google’s new decision will make enough of a difference, though, with them being both a late contender and having had a fairly closed group of users. But it is a good IM, and maybe they’ll catch up on the VoIP soft phone feature list.