I was going to post about the new Google Talk on my search engine marketing blog, but it has nothing to do with search other than it’s made by Google.

I’m not overly impressed with Google Talk, though I will likely end up using it. While it is still in beta, it lacks many features people expect in an IM client – smileys and a web cam tool to name two. Having an integrated voice chat is nice, but Yahoo! has that already. In short, there is nothing that makes this stand out.

I think Google undermined themselves with this. There is no prize for being the fourth IM on the market, unless it’s stellar. It’s not stellar. Of course, it’s still beta so they might have a trick or two up their sleeves.