If you’re a loyal user of AOL Instant Messenger, chances are:
a) You think the group chat feature is kinda cool, or
b) You are trapped in an office where AIM is still the lingua franca for team communiation, or
c) Everyone you know uses —and is stuck with— AIM
And if you’re also a regular user of Gmail, chances are you have been accustomed to chatting with your AIM contacts directly from Gmail, a feature which has been available since 2007.
Google and AOL are going to bring an improvement to this feature by allowing Gmail users to communicate with people on AIM without separately logging into an AIM account, and vice versa.
From AIM’s notice:
In the next few days, Google and AOL are working together to change the way you connect to AIM buddies within Gmail. After this change, Gmail and AIM users can talk directly to each other without having to log into both services (you will no longer be able to log into AIM within Gmail’s “Chat” section).
It’s unclear what technology the two companies are using to integrate both services, but AOL says it is working on an importer to add AIM contacts to users’ Gmail contacts list.
Anyhow, it’s good to know that AIM and Google Chat (Google Talk) will finally become interoperable, and that the AIM integration within Gmail will no longer be necessary.
If you’re a loyal and regular user of both AIM or Google Chat, chances are you’re hoping this integration improves everything and doesn’t take away from the features you enjoy the most.
