Google Talk beta

  • QUICK SPECS
  • VERSION: 1.0.0.64
  • DATE ADDED: August 23, 2005
  • PRICE: Free
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 2000/XP
  • TOTAL DOWNLOADS: 477,735
  • DOWNLOADS LAST WEEK: 1,999
  • PRODUCT RANKING: #11 in Chat
  • See full specifications

CNET EDITORS' REVIEW

Reviewed by: CNET Staff on December 05, 2008

It was only a matter of time before Google got into the chat game like many of its competitors have done. Although the beta version of Google Talk is free and has no glaring glitches, its bare-bones approach makes it less of a must-have than some of the company's other downloadable products.

To use Google Talk, you must already have a Gmail e-mail account. While most resourceful users shouldn't have too much trouble finding a Gmail invite, this hurdle may prevent some folks from trying the client. The program's clean, white, ad-free interface looks very similar to other IM applications, displaying a list of your contacts' e-mail addresses and their status. Right-clicking a contact gives you the ability to change the name. Similar to other chat clients from big-name companies, Google's offering provides both text and voice-based messenging. In our tests, the sound quality of voice chats was consistently good, and we didn't experience any problems while conversing via text.

You won't find much in the way of groundbreaking features; in fact, Google Talk lacks many of the standards. For instance, you can't set a display picture, use emoticons, or view your chat history. It also would be nice if the program included a voicemail option and let you have group conversations. It's cool that the pop-up e-mail notifications show you the sender and a brief preview of the message in your in-box, but that more of a small bonus. While we're confident an official release of this program will address some of its shortcomings, there's no urgent reason to switch to Google Talk at the current time.