It shouldn’t be surprising that Google aggressively goes
after the best talent in the business. Google’s
nascent IM business is apparently no exception.
To that end, Google has hired the lead developer of the Gaim instant messaging project, one of the most popular open source projects
on the planet, to help its IM development.
Sean Egan publicly broke the news on the Gaim Web site this week, revealing that he has been working in Google’s Seattle office for a month and a half on the company’s Google Talk IM application.
“Currently, I’m working on making it as easy as possible for other
clients to use Google Talk’s voice features,” Egan wrote in a post.
Gaim is a multi-protocol, multi-platform instant
messaging client that accesses the MSN Messenger, AOL AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, IRC,
Jabber, Gadu-Gadu and Zephyr networks and runs on Linux, Mac OS X and
Windows.
Gaim is routinely among the most active open source projects on the
SourceForge.net open source repository and routinely holds the No. 1
spot as the most active project on the site.
While Microsoft and Yahoo are now actively developing a way for their respective networks to interoperate, Gaim
already provides its users with a way to manage multiple IM networks in one
client.
Radicati Group analyst, Matthew Anderson considers the hiring of Gaim’s
lead developer to be a significant move by Google.
“I think it is very important, as Google constantly talks of wanting to
push interoperability and keeping things open in the IM market,” Anderson
told internetnews.com. “I think Egan will definitely be important for Google to reach these goals of interop.”
The big question about interoperability is whether Google will make
use of Gaim to create a Google-branded Gaim client that
aggregates MSN, AOL, Yahoo and Jabber networks into its own Google Talk
client. Such a move could leapfrog Google past its competition.
“If Google did happen to make use of a Google-branded Gaim-like product,
I think it would definitely help them to break into the market,” Anderson
said. “As of now, it seems the barrier still exists, for Google why would
any user commit to yet another IM network when the other big three still do not
interoperate?”
The Google Talk beta currently in release is based on the Jabber protocol,
though it currently doesn’t talk to non-Google Jabber servers. A Google Gaim client would extend Google Talk beyond the Jabber protocol.
“If Google were to release a client that allows users to log onto MSN,
Yahoo, AOL, Google Talk, and other networks, there would definitely be
appeal to IM users,” Anderson said.
The next version of Gaim is already expected to benefit from
Google-sponsored activity.
Google sponsored 15 projects at Gaim as part of the Google Summer of Code initiative.
Participating developers were to receive $4,500 for the summer’s work
and Gaim was to receive $500 for each coder it mentored.
According to Egan’s post on the Gaim Web site, the feature freeze for version
2.0 will occur at the end of October with the release expected
next month November.
