Had a quick moment to play around with googles new instant messaging service. It seems really nice and clean, with none of the “fluff” other Instant Messaging programs have. I’ve not tried the actual calling of people yet as my mic isn’t working properly 
but then it’s easier to type anyway.
One thing missing that I can imagine it being ignored by most of the IMing population is the lack of smileys (or emoticons, whatever you call them). Although that never stopped email.
The other issue of course is critical mass, when everyone you know is already on MSN, people are reluctant to move and lose contact with people, which is not helped by the fact that to access Google Talk you need to have a gmail invite. I’m running both MSN and Google Talk (GT?) for the moment, and using GAIM in linux both in one client 🙂
There’s already been people investigating it and talking about some cool tweaks. I quite like the text markup myself. If anyone wants a gmail invite in order to try out the service then let me know, I have about 100 to give away…
Dean Sas 