Google is tightening the link between Gmail and Google Talk by allowing users to conduct instant messaging text chat sessions from within the web-mail service’s interface.
Google is set to launch Gmail Chat, which will let users send instant messages with one click from their e-mail account, see when contacts are online and save the chat history like an e-mail message.
The application’s Quick Contacts list is synchronized with a user’s Google Talk friends list and automatically displays the people a user communicates with most frequently and shows their online status. Clicking on a contact listed as being online opens a chat window in the browsers.
To use Google Talk from within Gmail, users need not download any additional software or a separate application. The rollout, limited to users of the US English-language interface, will be completed in a matter of weeks, said Gmail product manager Keith Coleman.
People who use the Gmail service will be able to send and receive instant messages directly from their e-mail mailboxes, without having to start a separate application or open a separate browser window. The Mountain View Company is rolling out the new feature in stages it said.
The application lets users save their chat history for easy searching later and click an "off the record" option so that no conversation with that person going forward is saved by either party until they choose to go back on the record.
Gmail Chat is available on Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher and Firefox 1.0 and higher and in the U.S. English interface only.
While the chat functions of Google Talk are integrated into Gmail, users must download the Google Talk client application to make voice calls. In the United States, Gmail is the fourth most popular Web-based e-mail program, and Google Talk is ranked seventh among instant messaging programs, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
The service takes advantage of Google’s relatively new online instant messaging service, Google Talk. Both Google Talk and Gmail lag their competitors in market share, and analysts said the pairing is probably intended to drive people to each product.
Gmail, for example, was used by 4.5 percent of active Internet users during December, compared with 33 percent for leader Yahoo Mail, Nielsen//NetRatings reported. Google Talk reached less than 1 percent of Internet users, compared with AOL’s Instant Messenger, which reached 33 percent. There has been speculation; however, that Google and AOL, who are business partners, will eventually allow their services to work together.
Yahoo Mail indicates to users when their Yahoo Messenger contacts are online and allows them to launch a dialog with them instantly, as well as letting them make voice calls. It also allows users to check their voice mail and launch voice calling from Yahoo Mail. America Online’s AIM Triton offers integrated e-mail, instant messaging, SMS text messaging and voice and video chat.
Obvious Move:
It is not surprising they would do this, said Sara Radicati, president and CEO of the Radicati Group, which studies the e-mail and instant messaging industries. Gmail has been a late-comer, and adding IM capabilities is very sexy.
Allen Weiner, research director for Gartner Group, said linking the two services will expose millions of people to Google Talk, and they could turn into regular users. It could give their numbers a major boost, and numbers are important, Weiner said.
However, it would be an "obvious" move for Google to extend the Google Talk voice chat capabilities to Gmail, although the company is not committing to doing that at this point, Coleman said.
Google Talk sessions conducted on Gmail will be saved by default along with email messages. Users have the option of turning off this functionality to prevent the system from keeping a record of a text chat.
Google developed this feature to address the "arbitrary separation" that exists between email and IM applications, a source of frustration and inconvenience for users, Coleman said.
Users wanting to use Google Talk’s voice chat feature will have to use the IM service’s own interface, because, at least for now, Gmail will only host text chat IM sessions, he said.
But others questioned whether the Gmail pairing would do much for Google Talk’s popularity, since Gmail is used by a relatively select group of technologically savvy people.
“How do you get more people who are not using Gmail to use Google Talk?” Forrester Research analyst Brian Haven said.
As is now customary at Google, the company said it developed the feature as a way to solve a problem. This weird separation of e-mail and IM did not seem good to us, said. It is definitely a problem we all have here.
The company launched Google Talk in August of last year and made it a requirement for its users to have a Gmail account. Both services are free and both are in beta, or test, periods.
When Google Talk was launched, it included a set of initial links with Gmail, including identical log-in information and the ability to access the Gmail inbox from within the Google Talk interface and send email messages from there. In addition, Google Talk alerts users when new messages are received in their Gmail account. Moreover, the two services share a single list of contacts.
All Gmail users will have IM accounts tied to their Google accounts. Each person’s IM contacts list will sit in the left-hand column of their Gmail inbox. When a mouse cursor hovers over a contact person’s name, the user can start a chat session, which will appear in a chat window at the bottom of the inbox.
Google appears to be going against the grain of the Internet industry, which is linking communication services to instant messaging applications. Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have all integrated voice chat into their IM services. And both Yahoo and AOL allow IM users to link to their e-mail services through instant messaging.