The fight for web talk heightens

GIZMO GALLERY

With Google also getting into the instant messaging fray last week, Business Standard reviews the three major offerings

Even as the legal tussle between Google and Microsoft is making the headlines, these web portals, along with Yahoo! are involved in an all out war for supremacy in the web communications market.

In simple terms, this means Microsoft and Google and Yahoo are battling it out to control every single aspect of our online activity from organising, storing and retrieving information to audio and visual entertainment and to the way we communicate.

The latest example is Google's venture into the instant messaging (IM) software last week, with the launch of Google Talk. While Google may have joined the fray, the current version of Talk, is not very appealing. For starters, one will need a Windows 2000 or higher version (no Macs or Linux) for the 900 KB download, which would take only a few seconds with a broadband connection.

You'll also need a Gmail username and password before you can make free PC-to-PC calls. (For getting a Gmail account, you have to be invited by a current user.) After having used both Yahoo! and MSN's messengers for the last couple of years, Google Talk was a touch disappointing. Some of the review blogs have even termed it the 'stone age of instant messaging'.

Google Talk is friendly to use, but a host of features that charaterise IM is absent, including smileys (emoticons). Also, Google does not offer the option of sharing photos, group chats, font changes, video chatting and transferring files.

Other popular features like news headlines, online radio, and linking to friends' blogs are also non-existent. As for the search option, you will have to go back to website for it. Even as Google was pushing into Yahoo!'s and MSN's IM territory, these two web portals have hit back with some exciting features.

Yahoo! latest "" Messenger 7 "" offers Voice Over Internet Protocol, which enables users to make voice calls over the internet. This comes with a voice mail feature. Taking a cue from MSN, Yahoo! has introduced a new search feature called 'LiveWords'. You can now highlight IM text and receive search results for it. You can also display the search results during messaging and also search directly from the Yahoo messaging client.

Yahoo! has also come up with six more smileys "" "at wit's end", "call me", "daydreaming", "on the phone", "time out" and "waving". Sharing of photos is yet another interactive feature with Messenger 7. I found it relatively comfortable to use as you can drag and drop photos from your PC as well as Yahoo! photo albums.

In less than a week, after Google launched Talk, Microsoft has reacted by upgrading its Messenger with the launch of the 7.5 version. I downloaded the all-new Messenger and found that there was no great improvement in the voice-chat quality, as claimed by Microsoft. However, it is two other features that caught my eye "" a 15-second audio clip and the dynamic backgrounds.

With the voice clip, you can send short audio bits to IM buddies, while the dynamic backgrounds offers 10 new interface background images. Additionally, if you have a broadband connection and a webcam, video calls are an interesting option. Microsoft may also add 'click-to-call' features to Outlook or Internet Explorer. This implies that users may soon be able to call their online contacts.

In an attempt to undo Google's entry into the IM sector, Microsoft last week acquired voice-over-IP startup Teleo Inc., with the intention of launching phone-call capabilities through MSN Messenger. With Telco's technology Microsoft is aiming to be the first to offer calls from personal computers to both landlines and cell phones. Yahoo! and Google have also announced that future versions of their IM programs will have phone services capability.

Instant messaging has now turned its focus to the fastest growing web craze "" sharing and storing of digital photographs. These web players now offer solutions to send full quality and large numbers of photographs without clogging up the recipient's inbox.

For instance, when you use Yahoo! photomail, you only drag small thumbnails of the photos to the message, while the photo is uploaded in the central storage space.

The recipient therefore is presented with the choice of viewing the compressed copy or downloading the complete photograph from the central storage space. Additionally, it is not just photographs, but Yahoo! also allows you to centralise your calendar and contacts.

If you are using Google, then you can touch up your photographs with 'Picassa', and share them using Google's IM software 'Hello'. For bloggers, Google offers a better option "" you can upload the photographs to the web using blogger and create weblogs. The catch is that unlike the Yahoo's photomail, with most blogging software, the photographs are compressed (both in terms of size and resolution).

Adding yet another dimension to this battle, Google has also released an upgraded version of its desktop search bar tool. The free application runs on Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3. This information manager and search tool, includes a feature called 'Sidebar' that gives users access to e-mail, news, weather, photos, stocks and syndicated Web site feeds.

On expected lines, Microsoft has announced that its upcoming search engine will let the same tool search both PCs and the web. (Its test version was launched in July). Although Yahoo! already allows users to search emails in their Yahoo! accounts, the company in its bid to counter Google, is currently testing its enhanced email search, which allows search of email attachments and photographs.