Google is finally making good use of its 5 percent, or $1 billionstake in AOL: The company has integrated AOL's instant messaging application, or AIM, into Google Talk. The upshot is that Gmail users can log into Google Talk and access their AIM Buddy Lists and use the applications interchangeably. (AIM users won't notice a difference.)
While the feature is nice, it's almost irrelevant at this point. The chat space is crowded with instant messaging services (such as Meebo, Adium, Kopete) that allow people to use a variety of different IM programs through a single application. So the fact that Google is just folding AIM into Google Talk now seems sort of lame by comparison.
The real question is when will users ever be able to use MSN, Skype or Yahoo messenger applications through Google?
Photo: Flickr/yyq123
