Talqer, a real Google Talk fan?
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Another voice client hit the ground running today. Talqer, launched by Vozin, a company without any pedigree, but self-claimed to be true Google Talk fan. Talqer is supposed to untie GTalk to PC-to-PC free phone calls and to allow GTalk users to make phone calls to landline phones anywhere in the world. Right, that’s not new and possibly help GTalk gain some shares of the VoIP software market.
One: Fremont, CA-based Vozin offers phone rates 33% lower than Skype and even more if users are European residents because they won’t need to pay the VAT. Could somebody tell us if this practice is legal?
Second: Talqer works as a standalone voice client or bundles Google Talk as a plugin. There’s something weird in this. Wikipedia described Google Talk as a proprietary freeware, meaning that the brand has to be clearly readable.
Some fan sites, Customize Talk or the Spanish site Google Habla, do provide skins and tricks to customize the Google voice client. The GTalk blog knows them, even linked to one of them. But none of them came out with a standalone softphone that rips off the Google Talk name. Is it again legal?
And final word: If you plan to use Talqer, watch your email box a bit. Written in the Vozin privacy policy: “In order to better meet your needs, we may share some of your personal information with our affiliates and partners.” But you can opt out, they added.
What do you think?
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Update: Talqer seems to stick very close on GTalk’s development. Every enhancement. Even the smallest. For instance, the new GTalk beta version 1.0.0.91 has been released just before the last weekend… a new Talqr version already includes them. Nice work.
Mar 30, 2006 | By Nuno
2 comments
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Thank you very much for your Blog about Talqer and I appreciate the opportunity to comment and respond to some of your questions.
First, European companies are required to pay VAT (Value Added Tax) for goods and services they sell within the European Union. Skype chose to incorporate inside the EU when they started the company so they are required to pay VAT. Companies outside the EU are obviously NOT required to pay EU taxes. Vozin does not have a business presence within the EU, so yes, it is perfectly legal for us not to charge VAT.
Second, we did NOT “rip off” the Google Talk name from the Google Talk client. Talqer is a seperate program that integrates seamlessly with Google Talk to allow Google Talk users to make phone calls to regular telephone numbers from the Google Talk user interface. The graphic you pictured above is showing two programs running side by side. To make a call using Google Talk just type the number you want to dial into the white entry box on Google Talk and click on the green phone. Please, download the software and install it. You will see what I am talking about. Again, completely legal.
Finally, we NEVER share any customer information with unrelated third parties. Talqer completes calls using a number of different telecom service providers. The very nature of our advanced VoIP network requires us to provide certain information in order to our partners in order to provide Talqer users with telephone numbers. Users may direct us not to provide their information to third parties, but we may be unable to provide you with a telephone number as a result.
You missed one of the key principles that we include in our Privacy Policy, not once but twice:
“We have a zero tolerance spamming policy.”
It seems you also missed the explanation defining affiliates and partners:
“Vozin Affiliates and partners are companies that are authorized and contracted parties involved in the provisioning of our services and who will accept our commitments under this privacy policy.”
This means that all of our affiliates and partners are also contractually obligated NEVER to SPAM any of our customers. If they do so we will terminate them as a partner. So to address your final word, NO, there is absolutely no chance that you will ever receive any SPAM because you signe up for Talqer.
Thanks again for the enthusiasm. Should you have any further questions you are welcome to contact me directly via email at charlie[at]talqer.com.
Charlie Paglee, Esq.
President
Vozin Communications, Inc.
Thanks for the answers. We’re crawling a lot of news sources every daily. Sometimes, it happens that we don’t have time to look closely at some documents. We (very) appreciate that such a conversation could be held here to clear some points.