I just got the full roll-out of Gmail chat in my account, and took it for a test drive. As mentioned before, I love this idea. Automatic archiving of chat transcripts plugs a hole in Google Talk, and exposing those transcripts to Gmail-style searching is fantastic. It turns out that you can integrate chat search results with mail search results, or (using search options) launch a dedicated chat-transcript search.

The Gmail-chat experience starts with a Quick Contacts list that appears in the Gmail sidebar. This list is populated with recent email contacts, and lacks intelligence in ways that might be difficult to solve. I subscribe to many work-related and industry mailing lists, and those list addresses appear as Quick Contacts. Obviously, I'm never going to chat with a listserv. Fortunately, a quick Ajax pop-out lets me remove those impersonal contacts.

That same pop-out contains Mail and Chat buttons for starting either type of communication.

More after the jump...The chat window starts within Gmail, at the bottom right of the window. A Pop-out icon invites you to separate the chat window from the browser. When you do, it opens in a new, small browser window and looks just like Google Talk. Incoming chats likewise start in Gmail, and this gives rise to my biggest complaint: I need a "ping" sound when a chat comes in. If my Firefox tab containing Gmail is not currently active, I have no way of knowing that somebody is talking to me. I appreciate Google's modesty and desire to avoid intrusiveness, but I need that ping.

Gmail chats are automatically archived in Gmail, just like email messages. But you can turn off that archiving globally in Settings. Even cooler, you can "Go off the record" with a one-click command at any point while chatting, excluding subsequent portions of the chat from the archived record. Excellent!

Searching happens in the normal Gmail fashion. Chat results are mixed in with email results by default. Even if you click on the Chats category in the sidebar first, the search results mix in mail. (Same deal with other categories, such as Starred.) You can isolate chat results by going to "Show search options," and selecting Chats from the drop-down menu.

A chat search result is organized by the minute. I don't really need to know at what minute an utterance was typed, but I find this breakdown pleasing and useful to the eye.

Chris has the full Gmail chat roll-out now, and is playing with it; I expect he'll chime in with his own impressions in a separate post. My verdict? It's a winning release, and an important one. Just give me an audible ping.