Google has in my opinion, continously redefined well establised communication paradigms on the web. Cases in point,

• Search : Ofcourse, where it all started from.
• Email : Much higher storage space, tagging and conversations.
• Mapping : Panning and satellite photographs.
• Desktop Search : First to integrate with web search and now increased functionality with sidebar.
  
  So I set out to test this product with a lot of excitement especially in what innovative features Google would have added in this well known form of communication and made us wonder, WOW ! they could actually do this over the web ? However on testing it in a word, I was disappointed.

First what does it do : It is a standard IM in which you can add users and then IM/talk to them while they are online.

The good's :

• The best part is that it has the Google mark of a scrubby clean interface and simplicity. It does confirm to Google's "Dont make me think" style of UI design.
• It feeds in to your contacts from your gmail account so you can directly send invitations from there itself.
• The voice quality is very good.
• The claims are that it is sufficiently adherent to well known open source standards in IM in particular to the Jabber/XMPP protocol. Read more here.

The bad's/disappointments :

• The biggest disappointment is that it did not like Trillian allow us to migrate other IM lists in our list and we have to go about building a new list all over again. What a pain ! It does say that there is no "Service Choice" feaure in VOIP/IM where like a phone service you can communicate with users of other providers. How does Trillian do it then ?
• No new innovative features that I could see. VOIP based talk is long available from Skype and now in Yahoo messenger.
• No smileys, no avatars, no winks, no music, no games, audibles and this is a biggie NO webcam nothing.

Do leave in your comments.

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