I'm sure it's going to be the talk of the web for a short while, but Google indeed is starting their own Instant Messenger service. They're using the Jabber protocol, which technically means people with Jabber-enabled clients should be able to connect. Thanks to Chris Shiflett, I just did. He has a nice screen shot of the account configuration window for Gaim, which you can easily use to configure your own Gaim for GoogleTalk usage. Nice! And Google officially allows it as well. I'm connected using stefan.koopmanschap at [googlee-mailservice] . com ... if you dont have a gmail account yet but would like one, to start using GoogleTalk, just let me know ... I have plenty of invites left.