[Wocky] FYI: NYTimes Article on Google's chat

[Joanne M. Hallisey]

Hello,

Just passing along an article in today's NY Times Technology section. 

TECHNOLOGY / CIRCUITS | August 25, 2005
David Pogue: Google Gets Better. What's Up With That?

EVER heard the old joke about the two psychiatrists who pass in a 
hallway? One says, "Hello there." The other thinks, "I wonder what he 
meant by that?"

An improved Google Desktop Search, including Gmail, news, photos and 
Web clips. Both free Google tools are for Windows.

In high-tech circles, that's pretty much what people are saying about 
Google these days. If you hadn't noticed, Google is no longer just an 
Internet search tool; it's now a full-blown software company. It 
develops elegant, efficient software programs - and then gives them 
away. In today's culture of cynicism, such generosity and software 
excellence seems highly suspicious; surely it's all a smokescreen for 
a darker, larger plot to suck us all in. What, exactly, is Google up 
to?

The mystery only intensified this week, as Google announced two more 
free software tools for Windows: a new version of Google Desktop 
Search and a free instant-messaging program called Google Talk.

The original version of Desktop Search, which Google unleashed last 
fall, brought the speed and effortlessness of Google's Internet 
search to your own PC. You'd type a few letters, and in a fraction of 
a second, you'd be looking at a complete list of files that included 
your search term - even if that term appeared inside the body of a 
document. It could even search e-mail, chat-session transcripts and 
the contents of Web pages you'd seen.

Google Desktop 1.0 certainly blew away Windows' own built-in search 
tool, which operates with all the speed of an anesthetized slug. But 
it was limited in three ways.

First, you had to operate it from within your Web browser, limiting 
its convenience. Second, because it could call up Web pages, e-mail 
messages and chat transcripts, Google Desktop alarmed people who, 
ahem, had something to hide from bosses or spouses. And finally, it 
could see inside only a limited number of document types. For 
example, it couldn't search PDF files, Web sites visited with any 
browser except Internet Explorer, or e-mail messages except those in 
Outlook or Outlook Express.

VERSION 2 , now available at google.com in what's technically in a 
public beta test version, attacks all of these drawbacks with a 
vengeance. In Version 2, you can begin a search with a keystroke or 
by clicking in the search box that's always on the screen. A pop-up 
menu of search results appears as you begin to type and narrows 
itself with each additional keystroke. When you see the item you 
want, you can open it by clicking or by walking up the list with the 
arrow keys and pressing Enter.

In other words, you can now find and open a certain program, document 
or control panel entirely from the keyboard, with blazing speed and 
simplicity. This is old news to Mac fans, of course; the Spotlight 
feature in Mac OS X 10.4 works the same way. But for Windows XP and 
2000 veterans, getting such an omniscient, speedy search feature free 
is truly liberating. ( Microsoft plans something similar for the next 
version of Windows, due at the end of 2006.)

Google has also beefed up your privacy options. You can omit search 
categories like secure Web sites (banking sites, for example), 
password-protected Microsoft Office files, and so on, and you can 
even flag individual files so that they'll never appear in the search 
results again.

Finally, the program now recognizes many more document types: e-mail 
from Gmail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird and 
Mozilla Mail; chat transcripts from AOL or MSN Messenger; Web pages 
you've visited using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape or Mozilla; 
PDF files; and your Outlook calendar and address book. (And speaking 
of Outlook, Google Desktop now installs its own search bar right into 
Outlook, meaning that you can search your e-mail collection in the 
blink of a cursor.) The company expects to add more kinds of files to 
this list, thanks to a public plug-in protocol it has published 
online.

Yet believe it or not, the little search box is the last thing you'll 
notice when you install Google Desktop. The first thing you'll see is 
the Sidebar, a column of rectangular panels hugging the right edge of 
your screen. Each is a window onto a different kind of real-time 
information from the Internet.

Some are ho-hum, like your latest incoming Gmail and Outlook e-mail, 
news, stock and weather tickers. Others are refreshingly quirky: the 
Photos panel shows a continuous, two-inch-tall slideshow of pictures 
from your own collection, and the surprisingly useful Scratch Pad is 
a blank box where you can type casual notes throughout your workday 
(they're saved automatically). Each panel expands horizontally, 
drawer-like, to reveal more details when clicked.

The Sidebar is about as clean-looking as anyone could make it, but 
it's still a lot of clutter in a very small space, especially if you 
add new panels as they become available. On the other hand, you can 
tidy things up quite a bit: drag your Sidebar panels into a different 
order, hide the ones you don't use, or collapse them into one-line 
summaries.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image

A buddy list, and an exchange, on Google Talk.
Multimedia
Audio Slideshow
Inside Google Desktop Search
Readers
Forum: David Pogue's Columns

Once again, Google isn't the first company to dream up a modular, 
Internet-connected suite of miniprograms; the Sidebar is a lot like 
Mac OS X's Dashboard or the shareware programs Desktop X and 
Konfabulator. But never mind that; you can't keep a good idea down, 
and this is a good one indeed.

Google's second revelation this week, Google Talk, lets you 
communicate with your buddies either by typing or, if your PC has a 
microphone and speaker, by speaking. As long as you and your 
conversation partner are at Windows computers, you can converse with 
spectacular sound quality.

Now, Google Talk 1.0 is probably the most stripped-down chat program 
on earth. No conference calling, video chats or direct 
person-to-person file transfers. (Features like these are common in 
rivals like Skype, iChat and the messenger programs from AOL, MSN and 
Yahoo.) So what, exactly, is Google trying to prove here?

Its mission, in fact, is far grander. Google Talk aims to end the 
ridiculous era of proprietary chat networks. At the moment, AOL, MSN 
and Yahoo each maintain separate, incompatible networks. The big boys 
each want to be alone in the sandbox, and the losers are their 
customers.

Google Talk, however, is based on an open, published standard that 
the company is making available to all. Already, Google Talk 
communicates with popular chat programs like iChat, Trillian, Adium, 
Psi and GAIM, but that's just the beginning. Google is making 
overtures to Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft about making their chat 
programs compatible; EarthLink has already agreed to join the 
federation; and Google is also inviting the makers of games, 
collaboration tools and even cellphones to join in what it hopes will 
one day be a grand, unified chat network.

In the meantime, Google Talk is significant for another reason: it 
requires a Gmail account. (Gmail is Google's free, Web-based e-mail 
service, whose two most famous aspects are its vast capacity - over 
two gigabytes of storage for each account - and the ads that appear, 
in small type, off to the right side of each message you read. The 
ads are computer-matched to keywords in the body of the message, 
which disturbs some privacy advocates.)

Until now, Gmail accounts were available by invitation only. Google 
let the service spread gradually and virally, giving each existing 
member a few additional invitations to extend. At one point, people 
were actually selling these invitations on eBay.

As of yesterday, however, all that has changed. Now anyone can get a 
Gmail account - and can therefore use Google Talk. But to prevent 
spammers and other abusers from snapping up Gmail accounts by the 
thousands, Google has designed a clever safeguard: when you apply for 
a Gmail account, you must provide a cellphone number.

Google sends a code to your phone, which you use to complete the 
registration. (Actually, you don't have to own a cellphone; you just 
have to know somebody with a cellphone. They can get the code for 
you, because each cellphone number is good for a number of 
registrations - just not hundreds of them.)

In a single week, then, Google, the software company, addressed 
deficiencies in Windows, tried to create a grand unified chat and 
voice network, and opened its clean, capable, capacious e-mail system 
to all comers. All of this software is beautifully done, quick to 
download and fun to use - not to mention free and (apart from the 
Gmail service) entirely free of ads and come-ons.

Wish they'd cut it out. Trying to figure out what this company's 
really up to is enough to drive you crazy.


-- 
Joanne Hallisey
Sr. Project Manager
MIT - Information Services and Technology
617-253-1894
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