GTalk and AIM, sitting in a tree
Thursday, November 8th, 2007Looks like Google talk users will soon be able to chat with AIM users. Google Operating System (not an offical Google blog, despite the name) has some screenshots of a new Gmail UI that Google’s testing.
Included in the new Gtalk window is an option to sign onto AIM and your AIM buddies appear right alongside your Gtalk contacts. Cool.
What would be better, however, is real integration. Instead of turning the Gtalk web UI into a mutli-protocol client, how about letting Gtalk and AIM users talk to each other at the server level? Gtalk users should be able to talk directly with AIM users. I shouldn’t have to have an AIM account to chat with an IM user over Gtalk, and I shouldn’t have to use the official Gtalk client to do it.
This is a lot like the Microsoft and Yahoo integration. They didn’t integrate their chat systems, they just implemented each other’s protocols in the official clients.



