With Google entering the Instant Messaging arena, the same arena that I'm looking to compete in, I can't help but feel I'm surrounding by their towering shadow.
One of my friends has suggested that Google may just copy my idea, but I'm not so sure:
# Google have already chosen their chat paradigm and doing a u-turn would be complicated from a technical and strategic perspective.
# Google can't/won't take the risk with a new paradigm.
# A business can build a certain latent momentum. Successfully introducing a new way of chatting will mean you develop customers that already "get it" and are showing friends/etc so they "get it". Google would have to replicate that success which I don't believe would be easy to do without giving up too much market share.
# It would be cheaper for them to buy my success.
Anyway, Google are still yet to prove themselves in the IM game. There are others like Yahoo, and Microsoft who have been up and running for a long time.
Perhaps I'm just suffering from the psychological tunnel vision that Dr Robert Trivers talked about in "one of the podcasts I linked too.":http://alexpooley.com/articles/2006/02/01/self-deception I don't know...
Every idea I have ever looked at in detail has had some kind of significant hurdle. In general, you will either have to compete against existing players or you will need to establish a market yourself - both are considerable challenges. I don't expect it to be easy, but how many times in your life do you have a chance to change the chat paradigm?
As "they" say, nothing ventured, nothing gained...