Google Does IM - and Does it Right!

Google finally implemented an IM network/server pool and released a client. This is awesome news for those of us who figured it was only the next step. We agonized as google did this payment thing, baffled as to its purpose and its release while Google still hadn't done IM.

Google has a habit of taking a niche of the Net that's been done, do it themselves and completely render the prior efforts obsolete. Consider their mapping and directions effort, competing with Mapquest, and see how vastly superior it is in comparison. See how they've crushed the online web-mail semi-industry, long since plumbed by Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail but completely shaken up and reinvented by Google Mail.

Now they've done the same thing with Chat. Their "don't be evil" philosphy probably had less to do with them choosing the Jabber protocol as much as it did with ramping

We are going to try to be the first in the world to connect everyone to everyone Georges Harik, Google

up and with ease of implementation. And hey, let's face it: Jabber is the official protocol for Chat, standardized in the same manner as Email. And thank god Email was standardized before MS and Yahoo and AOL got their hooks into it: can you imagine an email system as fucked-up and non-interoperable as Chat is now?

Yeah, Google's Talk network uses Jabber and they're really open and encouraging about it. They say "Hey, use anything you want", like Gaim, which I'm using now.
All us fan-boys have been chanting about the revolution which will start as soon as something like Google starts using a decent and standard protocol like Jabber. I'm so hoping our dream will be realized, so that our friends finally have a reason to stop using those pathetic and proprietary protocols as they do now.

More power to Google, and I'm hoping they document Voice and Vision soon!