Google Talk

So the rumors about Google offering an IM (Instant Message) service appear to be true. There are already instructions on how to connect to their Jabber server. All you need is a GMail account. I’m on Google Talk right now using iChat on Mac OS X.

Servername: talk.google.com
Username: yourusername@gmail.com
Password: yourgmailpassword.

I’m curious to see where they’ll take this. The obvious thing that Google could add to IM is the ability to include your logged conversations in search results.

UPDATE 9:00pm 23 Aug 2005: The official Google Talk site is now live.

UPDATE 8:45am 24 Aug 2005: Someone has already discovered an easter egg in Google Talk:

In the about box (right click the taskbar icon) there should be this
play 23 21 13 16 21 19 . 7 1 13 5
substitute letters for numbers and you get
“wumpus.game”
add this to to your freinds list minus the quotes and play an old irc game!

I haven’t been able to make this work yet, I’m still waiting for my invitation to be approved.

UPDATE 10:15am 24 Aug 2005: An announcement was posted to the Google Blog this morning.