Google Talk Buddy Icons

Visiting Google's booth at CES I had a chance to sneak a peek at the next version of Google Talk. Guess what? Google Talk is getting buddy icons! Google Talk engineer Gayle Laakmann has been working on adding them to the Jabber-based instant messenger. Google Talk's buddy icon integration is modeled after Apple iChat.

I asked Gayle if she could give me some insight into what we can expect with the recently announced AIM-Google Talk integration. She couldn't tell me much, other than that it would work similarly to the AIM-iChat integration. This is actually good news for Google Talk fans, because it means that you won't need to create an AIM screen name in order for your AIM buddies to contact you on Google Talk.

What else is coming with Google Talk? Well, there was a demo at CES of Google Talk on a Blackberry mobile messaging device, but other than that there was nothing new that she was aware of (or would admit to). But we can expect a public release of Google Talk with buddy icons around the end of the first quarter, and AIM connectivity sometime in the second quarter.

Links:

• BigBlueBall Google Talk Center | Forum
• Download Google Talk