I definitely see the corporate environment as the initial target audience of Google Talk (the use of Jabber was a big hint there, as well), for reasons much like the ones you cite.
That said, I think they need to have another hook to get it out to the public. With a huge entrenched user base, AIM and Y! users don't have much incentive to go to another network (although the propagation of gmail accounts over the last year has done a nice job of creating an initial network of users), and the lack of file sharing, for many users, is a drawback, not a feature (although as webdav and similar tools take off, that should become less of an issue). Of course, the corporate element will influence this to an extent (if I want to chat with a friend at Tor, for example, it's either Google Talk or -- Heaven forbid! -- the asynchronous slowness of email), but I suspect that Google will need another hook or two to really approach ubiquity.
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Date: 2005-08-24 05:21 pm (UTC)That said, I think they need to have another hook to get it out to the public. With a huge entrenched user base, AIM and Y! users don't have much incentive to go to another network (although the propagation of gmail accounts over the last year has done a nice job of creating an initial network of users), and the lack of file sharing, for many users, is a drawback, not a feature (although as webdav and similar tools take off, that should become less of an issue). Of course, the corporate element will influence this to an extent (if I want to chat with a friend at Tor, for example, it's either Google Talk or -- Heaven forbid! -- the asynchronous slowness of email), but I suspect that Google will need another hook or two to really approach ubiquity.