Google Analytics, which is basically the former Urchin hosted on Google servers and delivered for free, is now available without invitation. You can see more information about the visitors of your site and analyze your performance. While Google Analytics had some problems that slowed your page loading and was even down for short periods, the service scalability has been improved. Google itself uses Analytics for most of its pages.
Google Spreadsheets, the service that allows you to create spreadsheets online and edit them collaborating with other people, is now a public beta. Although the spreadsheets have limitations and you can't add charts or macros yet, it's an interesting application, not intended to replace Excel.
The latest version of Google Talk, that includes support for file transfer and voicemail, will be released today, at Google Talk's 1 year anniversary. Although the client is not yet mature and it lacks basic VoIP features and a rich-text editor, the clean interface is a big advantage in the future developments. When Gmail will be out of beta (which is not that far away), the userbase will increase and the biggest problem of any messenger client (I don't use it because my friends / co-workers don't use it) will be solved.
Although true, people who use all of the above most likely don't mind adding another service to GAIM or Trillian.
ReplyDeleteI think perhaps it will grow as a VOIP-like cliend just because of availability. It's rare to find anyone who doesn't have a bunch of Gmail invitations to give out, and all those have Google Talk built into the browser.
I do see many people who refuse to switch to another IM service or even add another to the current set. I have also seen that people who use Multi-Messengers like GAIM are more willing to add another free service.
It just depends on how good the clients get, if GAIM and Trillian both develop full support for Google Talk's voice chat feature, theoretical multitused of people will use the service because of convinience, availability, and the increasing number of people who have a Gmail account.
The biggest obstacle to my (and anyone else who use's the free version of Trillian) adoption of GTalk is that it uses the Jabber protocol. While I love that GTalk uses an IM standard, ironically this hinders its adoption, because only Trillian Pro (the $30 version) can do Jabber. Hopefully one of the other major messaging networks will jump on the standards bandwagon and force Trillian to offer free Jabber support, but until they do I'm sticking with the holy trinity of MSN/Yahoo/AIM.
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