Google What? Posted by Jeff

After reading this article, I have decided that many people have an improperly founded faith in Google.

To take a small quote the article:

Users of the new Google-Talk-enabled Nokia device will be able to make calls -- either by talking directly into the device like a wireless handset or by attaching a headset -- to other users with the Google Talk software on their personal computers or handheld devices. Users won't, however, be able to make calls to regular phones.

Basically, Nokia is making this new tablet PC device, which holds some alluring cell-phone-like features, but they opted not to use a cell network, but instead to use the obscure Google Talk service. Google Talk, to anyone who is familiar (which, I think, is very few people), is an Instant Messenger service competing with Windows Messenger (Formerly MSN Messenger), AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger. My wife and I tried it one day, but were disappointed in the client software's lack of innovative features, and the total depravity of the userbase. Simply put, no one else we knew would have Google Talk, and everyone already has one or more of the other four. Why do we need yet another instant messenger? By embedding this into a tablet computing device, Nokia has chosen the smallest possible market. If I, as a computer geek type, cannot even find a person I know with Google Talk, how could any normal human being do so? Admittedly, there must be a few people onboard.

This seems to be a blind faith which has been put in Google, as if it will push its Google Talk service to be the mainstream IM protocol sometime within the next year. I have not seen any move to indicate that, and even if they tried, I am not sure if it would catch on, especially with their current feature set.

This, combined with Google's recent bumbling--oops, I meant bundling of the inadequate and agressive Symantec Norton Antivirus and Real Player with the supposedly 100% free software "Google Pack" which is likely to offend and put off many users who trusted Google implicitly in the past, makes the growth of their software products seem unclear.

Many things that Google does are EXCELLENT, however. They just need to be more attentive to their self-proclaimed mission to "Do No Evil", and other people need to choose things intelligently, rather than be willing to follow Google right off the edge of a cliff.