Now that Google Talk is out, people are running to get a taste of the program. I installed it, and it’s very clean and professional. You can probably find hundreds of sites talking about it now over Google itself and how it’s a blessing from heaven; however, I’m not going to talk about the qualities of the program. I am here to talk about the trend of adopting a new piece of software, and then bashing the software that was already there.

Yahoo and Microsoft both have their own versions of instant messengers, and they also have millions of users using those protocols. Yahoo has been offering free voice calls to anyone else in the world for a while now. The Google Talk offers features that are already available in Yahoo Messenger. On top of that, the other instant messenger programs have dozens of more features than what Google is offering. Even then, many people are simply considering Google Talk to be the best program ever, simply because it’s from Google. People who were previously praising Yahoo in comparison to MSN are now bashing both Yahoo and MSN, and saying that Google is now here to save them from these “bloated” programs.

Do you ever go to anyone’s house, eat their cake, and then tell them “Hey, your neighbor makes cakes on a better plate and has different design spoons to eat it with. So screw your cake!” How would that person feel, especially after the fact that you’ve already eaten the cake? Just because Google has come out with something that’s already being offered in a different way, with no ads, doesn’t mean the other products are not evil bad. Sawai was recently telling me Google offers a different kind of experience than Yahoo because the revenues for Google depend mostly on its search engine. For Yahoo, and thus others, revenue comes from many other sources. I don’t like the ads in Yahoo and MSN messengers either, but I do use those two programs, and bashing them sounds like yelling at someone who buys a cookie from you and you yell at them for giving you a dollar that has highlights and notes on it. You can still use the dollar, but you want a cleaner note. It’s same thing with these online services; someone already has something that does everything they want, but when something new comes up that does fewer things, but looks a bit slicker, those people start complaining about what they already had simply because they now don’t stand up to a few things that are found in the new “thing” that just came out.

Similarly, for me, the only reason Google can offer software like Google Talk without any ads or “extra” features is because it is expecting users to turn to google.com to search more and thus have a loyal base offering. How come the people who are praising the software don’t talk about the incapability of transferring files, or having web cams, or other features? “These are bloated features”, these users say now; these same users cried over Msn not having better file transfer rates or video capabilities like Yahoo, or argued about the extra powers of ICQ and how other programs didn’t have those features. Yahoo and others are offering their products for free; no one is forcing anyone to try the software. 5 years from now, when something else comes to compete with Google, people will bash Google for being too simple. People are giving Google talk “5 stars”, the maximum rating possible, over at Betanews.com even after they themselves list the downsides of the IM client. Is this the same behavior as in the case of Microsoft; praise everything with the word G in it, and bash everything that is even remotely related to Microsoft? People first bashed other software for being too “simple” compared to Yahoo Messenger or ICQ or even AOL AIM, and now many people are bashing every other protocol out there and praising Google Talk.

I love the new Google Talk, but bashing Yahoo and MSN for having “bloated” IM messengers is like saying a free donut from Krispy Kreme is bad because of all the calories, and the free donut from a local store is better because it looks cleaner, after we have been trying that donut for a long time and using it. No one is controlling the instant messengers market; anyone can come and offer their own protocol and software. Yahoo and MSN did that, and they offered what they thought was good. It is different than what Microsoft did with monopolizing Windows, however, and thus cannot be viewed in the same light; in the case of IM messengers, we have options of Jabber, Icq, Aim, or even using something like Miranda, Trilian or Gaim to work with these IM “giants.”

Gmail was going to destroy all other email services. Hotmail suffered, probably, and so did Yahoo. However, MSN and Yahoo increased the storage space in response to Gmail, and kept up the pace. People now know that 2GB+ of email storage is really hard to fill up for many of us. Yahoo and MSN are still getting more sign ups than Gmail, and the thirst for Gmail invites has gone down compared to before [I was giving away over 20 Gmail invites every week earlier this year, and now it's down to about 2-5 per week or around that]. Since Google Talk requires you to have a Gmail account, you have to depend on an invitation to get a Gmail account, since Gmail isn’t yet available to everyone. This is a tactic to create a demand for a product that’s cool, yet not available easily. Google itself know that for the Google Talk to work, it needs more users immediately, and thus just started giving away free invites to anyone with a cell phone through text messages. I like my Gmail account, but I also like my Yahoo account [I loathe the Hotmail interface though - the question of why Microsoft is taking so long to upgrade Hotmail or even make it look better deserves a separate entry]. We might end up seeing Yahoo and MSN messengers being changed [and hopefully their ads removed from within the GUI] in response to Google Talk. But whether or not that happens, we can still use them, and we still do.

So for now, let’s control our excitement hormones simply because we see the letter G in instant messengers. Let’s stop whining or being biased or against something simply because of unrelated generalizations, and focus on analyzing Google Talk, and future Google products, in their own light, and not in comparison to offerings from other companies, since that market is free at the moment [except Trilian, which offers a paid version in addition to the free version]. Next time someone gets hyper over the letter G, remind them that Bill Gates also has the letter G in his last name; that should keep the blood level under check for those people.