Google launched their own IM service last week and while it has some definite failings it seems a good overall first beta. It’s important to remember that it is still a beta and that it will likely develop in many directions over time.

Google Talk uses Jabber/XMPP so although there is no client available for any operating system other than Windows just yet (although OS X and Linux clients are promised soon) Mac users can use iChat or Adium and Linux users can use any of the wealth of Jabber or GAIM clients available to them.

The interface is clean and uncluttered in a stark contrast to MSN (which seems to be the most popular IM program around at the moment) and the audio conferencing uses the same codecs as Skype so it sounds pretty good too.

There’s still a lot missing - conversation logging (perhaps we’ll see this integrated into GMail at some time?) - there’s various reasons to suspect this, not least that the current version stores it’s logs in a URL Encoded format. File transfers (every other IM service offers this … come on!), Video conferencing (would be nice) etc etc…

But those of you who remember GMail when it was first introduced will see how far it’s come along in just under a year, I expect we’ll see good things from Google Talk.