Google Talk has a refreshingly clean interface for a telephony application. You must have a Gmail user name and password or a Google account in order to use Google Talk, but Gmail registration is free. You can issue invitations to friends and colleagues who don't currently use Gmail.

Google Talk can currently communicate with several other services that support the industry standard XMPP protocol, including Earthlink, Gizmo Project, Tiscali, Netease, Chikka, MediaRing, and thousands of ISPs, universities, and others. You may have noticed a few big names are glaringly absent from that list, include AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger.

The default view displays all of your Gmail contacts, but you can change it to show only the names that you add to a Friends list. You can add anyone you frequently exchange email with (Gmail, that is) to the Friends list. You can also set Google Talk to let you know when an individual on your Friends list is online. Other options include the ability to save chat histories to your Gmail account (the default) and block any Gmail contacts that you may not want to chat with.

The voicemail feature (microphone required) is fun, and the audio quality isn't bad. You can leave a voicemail for anyone on your Gmail or Friends list, whether they're online or not, and whether they use Google Talk or not. If the recipient of your voicemail message isn't home, an MP3 recording of your message will be sent to their Gmail account. They can listen to it at their leisure.

If you want to check your Gmail, you can click an icon at the bottom of the chat window and go directly to your inbox.

Many reviewers criticize Google Talk for its lean interface and barebones features, but we find it to be nearly perfect in its simplicity. It does what it's meant to do, and doesn't bog you down with a lot of junk.

Google Talk is an easy-to-use telephony application that, for the moment at least, is blissfully free of ads and other clutter.


Pros: Easy to use; clean, uncluttered interface; no ads; includes a voicemail feature; supports file transfers; reasonably good audio quality
Cons: Currently requires a Gmail user name and password; no Mac version; can't communicate with the currently most popular instant messaging services