Where did Google Talk come from? Not far from Microsoft, literally. According to brief item in the Seattle Times much of the work was done at Google's research facility in Kirkland, Washington that's about a 5.6 mile drive from Microsoft HQ. Google opened this site last November.
Were it not for us having the Kirkland office, we wouldn't necessarily have had this product," said Georges Harik, a director of product management who oversaw Google Talk. The way Harik tells it, a number of engineers in the Kirkland office were interested in developing an instant-messaging product earlier this year. They started working on it full time, and within a few months the product was ready to go.
Harik told SEW that Google Talk was tested internally for about a month before its launch last week.
Some Google Talk technology was not developed in-house but raher licensed from Global IP-Sounds based in Stockholm. More about that here.
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