Google has announced
new features further integrating
Google Talk with
Gmail. Google Talk chat history can now be saved in your Gmail inbox, right with your emails. You can manage your logged chats just like an email. And later this month Google will be rolling out additional web chat features that let you chat directly from any supported web browser.
One feature that I like is the
"off the record" feature. This let's you specify if a particular chat should not be logged by either party. According to Google:
"Going off the record applies to individual people, and is persistent across chats. That means once you go off the record with a particular person, you will always be off the record with him or her, even if you close the chat window."
Of course, this doesn't prevent your chat partner from using some other method of saving the chat transcript such as cut-and-paste to Notepad, but it does keep your Gmail archives clean.
I've tested this with my own Google Talk account and Gmail, and it works pretty well. Chat logs are stored in a separate section. It's a nice touch, and when the Google Chat option appears, it will be better still.