AMCP Tech Blog

After nearly a year since the software's release, Google has introduced a handful of new features for its instant messaging program, Google Talk. Once your version automatically updates, you'll be able to file-share with other Google Talk users by simply dropping files or entire folders into the client and show your music status to show what you're currently listening to (Yahoo! Messenger also offers a similar feature that it integrated with its music service, LAUNCHcast). But, Google has taken the music status feature to a whole new, social level by integrating Google Trends to show what's the most listened to music on the Google Talk network. But, what if you want to talk to your friend, but he's offline? Now you can leave a voicemail, which can last up to 10 minutes (Note that Google has already been testing this feature with a select number of people).

Although Google Talk has a reportedly small user-base (I highly doubt those numbers though), Google and AOL will make their two IM service interoperatable, as a result of the $1 billion investment by Google in December. This move will be made to counter the Yahoo-Microsoft partnership which allowed Yahoo! Messenger users to IM MSN/Live Messenger users, which was announced in November 2005 but finally released in July. Google is already interoperatable with other services which use XMPP (Commonly known as Jabber, an open protocol). All I know is one thing, I better see these new features come to Google Chat in Gmail, Google's popular e-mail service.