Google Talk gets graphical smilies

Google has quietly added animated smilies or "emoticons" to the Gmail-integrated version of Google Talk. They've obviously had a lot of feedback from the AOL-crowd, who apparently loves smilies. But Google has tried to appease the purists who like Google Talk's clean interface. These emoticons begin by showing you what you typed, then rotate or morph into a more traditional smiley. Most of them are black on white (like the text in chat), with a few splashes of color.

Here's a complete list:

As we previously reported, Gmail Chat is being rolled out as a beta. Some people will see it, others won't. You won't be able to run Chat if you're using SSL encryption (https://) to access your Gmail. And so far, these emoticons haven't found there way into the standalone Google Talk program, but it's a pretty safe bet that's next.

Because these use many of the standard text shortcuts for emoticons, if you use Chat to talk to other people using different software (Gaim, Trillian, etc.), most of these are already translated into graphical emoticons. Some of the obscure ones ("rock out!") will not.

Could the integration of emoticons be a sign of what's to come? Is this just one more step in the preparation for the announced interoperability of Google Talk and AIM? We've already seen a preview of Google Talk with buddy icons.

Let's hope Google doesn't turn Google Talk into another bloated "me-too" instant messenger.