Google IM

Last night during dinner I finally was able to tell Sergey and Larry about my idea for creating the type of IM that Google could launch that in my view could beat Instant Messenger. My concept for revolutionizing chat is based on something I said before, that text of the kind I am using right now to write this blog is obsolete. If you think about it, text is great only because you were trained for 12 years, or more in most cases, to use it. Otherwise text sucks. Have any doubt? Watch an 8 year old chatting and you will see. Younger children who have not developed the skills to type endlessly without making mistakes that others frown upon, use much less text when they chat. What they use is emoticons, skype, webcams or anything to get away from text slowness and boredom. Well my idea is a plan to include the best emoticons of all, your files as given to you by Google Desktop (if you don´t have this amazing tool download it right now!) and by Google when you chat. What makes a good chatter? To me somebody who chats very well is someone who can reply quickly and with somebody who sends you a lot of MEANING in little time. Now how can u increase the rate of MEANING going through a chat? With GOOGLE!

The concept is this. Imagine a chat that looks like instant messenger but that it has on the right side (not below like IM) a column of emoticons plus Google objects that are generated because, as you chat, Google is constantly googling the subject matter. For example somebody says, “Have you seen Anne lately?” and even before you type a picture of Anne, an “anne.jpg” that you have stored in your laptop, is offered as a choice in the reply. In other words, Anne has become and instant emoticon manufactured by Google as you were IM ing. Pictures could become emoticons, songs could be relevant and sent as well, video images, links to the whole web (in the case, for example, that you are talking about not Anne, but say Ibiza, and you get links to web sites that show what Ibiza is like, or how to get there)… some sponsored, some not.

Some readers could find this feature annoying, they may want to chat with text alone. But in that case things would be no different than they are today for readers that do not use emoticons. They are there, you just don´t use them. Eventually though I can imagine how people who couple the power of Google computing as they chat or e mail could just seem smarter and be able to produce more MEANINGFUL thought output per minute.

When I was done Larry loved the idea and invited me over to Google headquarters to present it in detail.

• Google
• Google IM
• Larry Page
• Sergey Brin