Google Releases Web-based Chat Module

By Ben Gross
in

Today Google released a Flash based Google Talk gadget. Overall the user experience is smooth and the tabs for individual chats are handled well. Links from YouTube, Google Video, and Picasa are recognized and the content can be viewed from within the gadget. The Talk gadget joins official gadgets for many other services such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, etc. Users can easily embed these communication and productivity gadgets into personal web pages, blogs, Google’s personalized homepage, etc with no programming knowledge or software installation.

Windows users who are simultaneously running the Google Talk desktop client can also place calls. Hopefully, Google will add voice functionality directly to the gadget without the dependency on the desktop client in the future. This would make the Google Talk Gadget cross platform and preferable to the desktop client in many ways as no application beyond the browser would be required.

Published March 14, 2007