Should Google launch an IM Client to consolidate its services?

Google has proved itself and everyone else that they are capable to organically achieve what they believe is their mission, which is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This phrase makes itself true and verified every time anyone use Google to get information. Google now disposes of a variety of services -whether Betas or not-  beside their search engine. Most revolutionary useful of them are Google Maps, Google Groups, Google News, Froogle, and not to forget Gmail, Gmail is just the next best thing that could happen to one if it did not already. Google's next legitimate product launch should be an IM Client to consolidate all of its services. This IM client should integrate Gmail, personalized news feeds, a watch on wish list prices, the latest history of own searched queries, pending questions in the Google Groups, a local satellite snapshot with marked points of interest and happening events, integrated Google Desktop Search to easily find any type of files in the computer, and finally quick Google searches. All these functionalities should be accessible from the client interface simply and clearly put by Google as they always do. Not only that, but all the capacity of getting information should be googlely easy to share among other users. This would launch a bomb shell in the world of the Internet making everyone migrating from competitive IM clients to the Google IM. Hoping for Google to release the GMessenger soon, one could still fantasize till then.

Comments

[Rev. Dr. Spyder X]

Google is great,Google is good,let us thank them for our.......Everything! Totally agree.. Missed one,though. They bought Blogger,so they could also integrate that.. Yahoo 360 is trying to do it all with theirs,but I just don't see it happening. Google is the way.

[Hakim bennis]

To Rev. Dr. Spyder X,

I agree with you blogger should be integrated too. It's only that i don't really consider Blogger the same quality product they usually make -knowing that it was bought-. We will see

[dendrite]

Answer: No.

Google is a search company. They make products to improve searching a wide array of information. They make money by selling advertisements related to those searches. Their interest in putting people in touch with one another is only ancillary to their search engine mission.

There are already hundreds of other IM clients out there which do their jobs well. Unless Google devises a way to significantly improve this area I doubt they will make a client. Having a piece of software which integrates their collection of services together is an old idea and has been discussed ad nauseum.

Google may decide to release an IM Client or Web Browser simply for the sake of market share. This would be a huge step out of their current focus and would mark a highly significant departure from their mission. It would be a risk probably not worth taking anytime soon.

[Samuel D]

Releasing an IM Client would actually be a way for G to extend its supporting spaces for their Adwords offer.

And as a user, I guess it would be more fun to have contextual ads changing in real time in relevance with our chats, instead of the boring advertising banner we can find in MSN Messenger !!!

[Hakim bennis]

To answer dendrite

Google does not make all their product for the only sake to make money, directly or not, they eventually will. But one have to think that an IM client will atually increase adversiting revenues anyway -they can still display an add or two in the client interface-.

Look at their latest launch. Mobile Google Local, how is that increasing their profits? It is only gaining them market share and users loyaltyness. Think Google!

[Hakim bennis]

Totally Agree with you Samuel D.

[Myroslav Opyr]

Google has Hello from Picasa company. IMHO, there are a lot of work behind the scene, as Google Desktop search is prepared for Google IM program. Hello is integrated with Picasa and Blogger already. Picasa is integrated with Blogger, Gmail and Helo already.

There are rumors of VoIP Google interests at the moment, and hire of Fibre specialists. Google is increasing its storage capacity (Google is indexing and caching larger files, Gmail storage is constantly increasing). Google became domain names registrar.

What would be the next? Probably Skype-like voice IM in Hello. Corporate mail services (non-Gmail domains). Blogger.com blogs on domains and hosting from Google (quite probably for free).

[Randy]

Google will definitely launch its own IM client quite soon, probably by quarter 4 2005. I can assure ou that they're working on it.

[Leo Westebbe]

They already have one! it's called Hello (see http://www.hello.com)! It is integrated with Blogger, Picasa 2, and Gmail! Who'da thunk it?