Lots Of Chatter About Google Talk

Reading the tea leaves on a new Google product — and watching others do the same — is as addictive as the game of Weboggle I’ve been playing off and on for days. The official basics: someone at Google told John Markoff the company would be launching a communications tool Wednesday. The unofficial guesses making the rounds:
–the name is Google Talk.
– It may or may not use instant messaging from Jabber, which, as far as I know, is still an independent company not owned by Google.

– It will include VoIP.

– It will have to include something besides IM, VoIP and the Google name to stand out from the crowd. As I noted yesterday, Google already owns Hello, a photo-and-file sharing IM that includes a lot of nifty features. Combining even some of those with IM and VoIP could do the trick.

Another thought after spending a day with Google Sidebar, which already includes a chat-indexing function: whatever it is will be integrated with other Google tools/services and could come with an API to encourage extensions, plug-ins, etc. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if it automatically records text and possibly audio (it would come with an off switch) for later search or if it pops up ads based on keywords a la Gmail.
Like I said, it’s addictive.

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