I lied. Google talk is real. :-)

I lied. Google Talk does exist. Oh, and now that that's out in the open, guess what team I'm on? ;-)

Joe Beda (eightypercent.net) is also on the team and has more info on his website.

So I know what you're saying: do we really need another IM client? Google Talk is using the Jabber protocol, which is an open source protocol. Trillian, Gaim, iChat, etc can all connect to the Google service, since they support Jabber. So, different client, but an established, existing protocol.

What is Jabber? The way I always explain it to people is that Jabber is analogous to the IMAP or POP3 protocol. It's not an application, or a service - it's just a protocol. Much like Outlook / Eudora can connect to the seas.upenn.edu server using the POP3/IMAP protocols, the Google Talk / Gaim / Trillian / iChat client connects to the Google Talk server using the Jabber protocol. Open source goodness. :-)

And a screenshot: