The rumors are solidifying, and the L.A. Times this morning is running a piece that states categorically (citing unnamed sources) that Google will launch an instant message service, possibly as early as tomorrow (which John Markoff of the NY Times hinted at). The L.A. Times piece asserts that Google's chat service will have a voice element, similar to Skype. A pure VoIP product? I imagine Google will incorporate some information retrieval angle to the interface, and that whatever IM/chat/VoIP product is brewing won't be completely unrelated to search or "organizing the world's knowledge." Between Google Desktop 2 and this thing, Google is making this an unusually interesting August.
1. This blog's sister site has already got a copy of the preview: http://www.downloadsquad.com
The link to download the app, from talk.google.com has apparently been removed..!
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Hitesh Sawlani