• Google Talk + AIM Equals What?

    I log into my Gmail account this morning, and lo and behold, I see a little red link at the top of the screen desperately trying to get my attention. It tells me that AIM chat is now available on my Gmail! Yay! But wait…. why do I need that exactly?

    The quick and easy answer is…. dun dun dun…. I don't! I have Trillian open when I use my sucky Dell, which allows me to use MSN Live, Yahoo, and AIM IMs all at the same time, so I can keep track of all my silly friends who don't use AIM. And no, I don't use ICQ. I've never seen the point, frankly.

    When I get my glorious black Macbook next week, I will abandon all things Dell and enjoy the lap of luxury… just me and my Adium back together again… I may need a minute…

    Right! So where was I? Oh right! AIM and Gmail. Yeah…. that will work great for anyone who obsessively leaves their Gmail open all day. I personally don't, because I need my Google search results to NOT be skewed by my "personal preferences". In case some of you didn't know, some of your Google search results will be different than everyone else's while you're signed in to Gmail because Google is trying to pinpoint what you specifically want to find. That's the official story, anyhow. So since I usually check Google to see where my stuff or my clients' stuff is ranking, I have to log off Gmail in order to do this. Result: I never stay logged in to Gmail after I'm done reading an email. I suppose this is partly due to the fact that Gmail is not my primary email account either. 

    Who exactly does this benefit? I suppose this will probably benefit the massive Indian fanbase of GoogleTalk and Orkut, Google's private networking site that completely sucks. Maybe this is a bit harsh. There are thousands of people out there who don't own a domain which they can use for a primary email. That being the case, Gmail is definitely better than Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, so why not leave a window open all the time to check your Gmail? 

    I must confess, I've never used GoogleTalk either. I simply don't have many friends who use GMail. So some of you will love this, most of you will wonder why it's a big deal. The quick and easy answer is… it isn't.