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Google wouldn’t have been “complete” without one right? I mean, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL have it. Why not Google? Let’s face the truth. Hello, Google’s photo sharing application, can’t really be considered a chat application. It’s not like anyone says “hey I’ll be on Hello when I get home, send me a message.” I can’t imagine what it’s like to work for Google right now. They’re churning out services like Oompa Loompas candy at Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. I’m still amazed by the recent Google Desktop Search application with an interegrated sidebar complete with developer extensibility. I’ve been reading snippets online since Sunday and figured I’d wait for an official announcement before posting anything. As such, I’ve compiled the latest reads concerning a possible public Google [Jabber] IM service:

Google has an active Jabber server, Google IM coming soon? – According to Neowin, Google users are able to log into Google Jabber servers using their Google username and password.

telnet talk.google.com 5222
Trying 64.233.167.125…
Connected to talk.l.google.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
to="talk.google.com"
xmlns="j abber:client"
xmlns:stream="http://etherx.jabber. org/streams">

Google Talk rumors, IM Client – The domain talk.google.com is active and redirects users to www.google.com/talk/ which redirects to a 404 page not found.

Google To Deliver Instant Messages – LA Times is reporting that Google will announce a instant messaging program called Google Talk as early as wednesday (8/24).

Report: Google Plans Instant-Messaging System – eWeek states: “Google Talk goes beyond text-based instant messaging using a computer keyboard to let users hold voice conversations with other computer users [...]“.

Check the Slashdot and Metafilter threads as well.

If these rumors do pan out and materialize, I’d love to see some sort of integration with Gmail. Imagine logging into your Gmail and seeing a list of “online contacts” in your inbox view.

Thanks to Smash’s World I was able to log on to the Google Jabber server using my existing Google username and password. When I check my offline contacts using Google’s Jabber server, it lists email addresses I’ve emailed within the last few hours. Interesting proof of how integrated this Google Talk service may be.

How to set it up with GAIM on Windows/Linux, or Adium on the Mac:
– For iChat, just enter the information above.
1. Add an account, select “Jabber” as the protocol.
2. Your screen name is everything before the ‘@gmail.com’.
3. Server is ‘gmail.com’.
4. Click “show more options” and make sure “use TLS if available” is checked. Leave “Force old SSL” and “allow plaintext…” unchecked for now. Connection port should be 5222, connection server should be ‘talk.google.com’ without the quotes.
5. Ta-da! Just login and you should be good-to-go.

Surprisingly, Download Squad has a review of Google Talk complete with client screenshots.

The download is tiny (about 900k) and the install is so quick and easy you don’t even realize it’s finished yet. You sign in with your Gmail account and are immediately presented with your (momentarily empty) buddy list. There’s an Add Friend button, a “Search all contacts” field which searches both your Google Talk and Gmail contacts, and a drop-down under your name that lets you set your available/unavailable status and messages. There’s also an Inbox button which takes you to Gmail, plus Help and Settings.

Now how in the world did Download Squad manage to get this out? You have to admit the client looks mighty tasty. I’ll be switching as soon as a download link is found. I don’t care if Google is going to scan my chats for possible future targeted ads. They can read all the useless crap I send out over the net. I’m also thinking that it might be useful for chat logs archiving directly to our Gmail accounts.