Our friends at Phandroid have received an anonymous tip which contained screenshots of Google’s rumoured unified chat service, Google Babble. In terms of appearance, this looks like a refreshed, refined version of Google+’s messenger for Android, including features such as image sharing and polling!
A pop-up menu allows you to attach various things to a message, including sharing files, events, locations, photos, etc, and it looks like you will be able to directly launch into a Google+ Hangout from a button at the top of each chat window.
If these screenshots are to be believed, we could be looking at a replacement for a number of IM solutions, not just Google products like Talk, Google+ Messenger, etc, but for non-Google IMs as well. I can see this kicking WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and a number of other apps to the kerb. It remains to be seen whether these screenshots are real, and if so, when Google Babble might eventuate, but Phandroid seems to think it could be a keystone feature of Key Lime Pie. Let’s see!
That screenshot is fake. For whatever reason I can’t post links here, but some guy that works for XDA, Shen Ye, made a mockup of what it could look like and it got picked up by articles.
Also, whatever Google end up calling this thing, I hope the final name won’t be “Babble”…
It’s interesting watching my kids, nephews, nieces etc. How their little social groups agree on a Message App to use. And yeah at the moment that’s WhatsApp.
For it to compete with what’s app it’ll need to do SMS and also be available on iPhone and windows phone?
That said support excited to see this… I use g talk and even Google messenger a lot already.
I’m hoping they integrate SMS.. I want a one-stop communication-shop. Cross platform I don’t care about as much.. iPhone is probably a given (though it’ll come later).. if they make a Mac/Windows app I’d love it, but I’m not holding my breath for that.
That is exactly what I also want! One of my favourite features of Windows Phone is that the Messaging application integrates both SMS and Facebook messaging. If Google could do that for Gtalk and SMS, I would marry them!
I would like SMS’s to be synced between my Android devices as well, though, but there are other options for that.
Theoretically possible though.. they all use the same underlying transport (Jabber) as far as I’m aware.
I really hope it integrates sms.