Google Talk Upgraded

It is a well-known fact that Google Talk has been just another of Google’s product offerings that has not been able to find a faithful following. According to comScore, Google Talk has been installed 976,000 times, but in June it only had 44,000 users, which places it nowhere near the likes of AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger.

Would a trio of new features do the trick? Probably not, but for Google it’s worth a shot. At the very least, the recent upgrades will put smiles on the faces of their small band of users.

Google responded to requests for file transferring capability by making it one of the new features for Google Talk. Users of the IM service can now share files with each other without having to worry about the size, type, or number of files being transferred. Google Talk does not place any limits on file sizes or types.

The second new upgrade is voicemail. For users who use the IM client to call their contacts, they now have the option of leaving a voicemail for their friends who are not at their computer after four rings. If a Google Talk user is trying to call someone who does not use Google Talk, they can still leave voicemail messages, which will be sent in an email to their friend with an audio file containing the voicemail attached.

Lastly, Google Talk now shows what music the user is currently listening to. Users can enable this by choosing to “Show current music track” in their status menu. When a Google Talk user changes tracks, the status bar will follow suit by displaying the new song being played.

These are all neat features that will be embraced by current Google Talk users, but they will not guarantee a jump up the ranks of popular IM clients.

Sources:

http://www.google.com/talk/whatsnew_more.html

http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/
searchinsider/wpn-49-20060728GoogleTalkHas
VoicemailNow.html

http://gigaom.com/2006/07/24/how-many-
google-talkrs-really/