We’ve been hearing quite a lot about Google’s apparently upcoming unified messaging platform and while it certainly seems like a long way off, it’s something that we could see debut at this year’s I/O. I’m sure a lot of you out there would welcome such a service, especially if all of your friends are big users of Google’s services on the web. Take us, for example, to keep in touch we all use Google’s service, Talk, Google+, GMail and Hangouts but, every so often there’s some smartass that has to go and use the Google+ Messenger. Which has never made any sense to me at all, why is it there when they could just integrate Talk? This is just what a unified service from Google would aim to do; bring all of these messaging fragments together to create a unified platform for us to chat away with.
For a long time, we thought that it was going to be called “Babble” but now, Droid-Life are reporting that it could well be called “Babel”. Or that’s what their sources have told them is being used internally. Babel would be a much better name than “Babble” but, it also sounds very much like a codename, it’s not an instantly marketable name, is it? For those that don’t know what “Babel” means, take a look at what Dictionary.com has to tell us:
“A confused mixture of sounds or voices”, well that sounds just perfect for a unified messaging system, right? In all seriousness though, it could end up being named completely different but, Hitchiker’s Guide to The Galaxy fans will be disappointed to hear that it probably won’t feature a fish.
Droid-Life’s source is reporting that the service might well feature the following:
- Ability to access the same conversation list from anywhere
- A new, conversation-based UI
- Advanced group conversations
- Ability to send pictures
- Improved notifications across devices
The top one in that list is particularly interesting to me, I have a tablet, two chromebooks and whatever smartphones I’m dealing with this month so, to be able to contact people in the same manner across all of my devices would be brilliant. This is something that we should be easily able to do, as the service is said to be coming to Android, iOS, Chrome, Google+ and GMail, however there is no mention of Google Voice in there. iOS support might not sound nice to a lot of you but, a system like this has to support everything and bringing iOS into the mix is what’s going to make it happen.
Would you like to see this pop up at this year’s I/O?