Instant Messengers - Just add hot water!

The Google Talk Team is slowly rolling out a major, MAJOR update to their product, but if you don't have it yet, you could download it right now directly via this link. The update includes:

• File-transfer
• Voicemail.
• Music Status
  

Pretty self-explanatory. I hope they add voicemail as well as VoIP to GChat (Gmail's integrated messenger) some time in the future.

Microsoft and Yahoo recently joined forces, in a way, to create an IM oligopolyallow their IM users to talk to each other. The products of this partnership are now available for download as the latest versions of Y!M and Windows Live Messenger. The idea is to f*cking bury the other competitionremove the necessity of installing multiple IM clients to chat with your friends. Of course, there are other ways of solving this problem, like creating an IM client that can be extended to logon to any IM protocol (like, you know, Gaim, Miranda-IM, etc.), or advocating an open standard IM protocol like Jabber (which Google Talk uses)...but then, where's the fun in that? /sarcasm

I have read stories about the time when there were various email protocols and when emailing someone wasn't as trivial as entering his email address in your email service. That was more that two decades ago, ancient history for Internet users. Man, I wish IM companies weren't so medieval...

Update: The Google Talk update is now officially available. Read the GoogleBlog post.