Google Finally Ends Support for Google Talk
I was trying to log in to my old school Google Talk when I got a notification that my password and username don't match. I dreaded this. This is the time that Google has finally killed Google Talk. It's not at all surprising for me as I have received a notification from Google that starting at a certain date, they will stop supporting Google Talk already. And today, I received an email from Google telling me that they noticed that I was trying to log-in through G-Talk and that they're no longer supporting Google Talk. They suggest using Hangouts instead. This is sad news for me.
Why I liked Google Talk over Hangouts
Over the past few years since Google first launched Google Hangouts, I have always preferred the old school, simplistic Google Talk for standalone chat client and Google Voice plugin for webchatting on Gmail. For one, I've experienced having issues like my browser freezing with the Google Hangouts mail chat. At other times, I had issues connecting to and loading the whole Hangouts mail chat itself. That's why every time I try to check if the Hangouts issues have been fixed, I just revert to the old Google chat.
As for Google Talk, I've always liked the simplistic approach. Even when Google released the Hangouts app for desktop, I never upgraded. And whenever I get a new computer, I just look for a Google Talk download link since Google has stopped providing a Google Talk download on their own site for years now.
Now, I have no choice but to go see and use Hangouts. If it doesn't work well for me after a few days, then I will just stick to my old school Google Mail chat.
Update:
For those who don't know what Google talk is, it was Google's first in-email chat client that was integrated into Gmail. People commonly called it G-chat or G-Talk. Unlike Hangouts that now comes as a Google Chrome app, Google Talk had a standalone desktop app, and it's one of the things I miss about Google Talk. How I wish there was a standalone desktop app for Hangouts, but currently, there's none.
