Google Talk

A lot of rumors about Googles new instant messaging application last week: today Google Talk was released. It’s possible to log into Google Talk with any Jabber-compatible Instant Messenger (because it uses the XMPP protocol). But while they use Jabber as technology it does not connect to the existing Jabber servers around. That is really a bad decision.

Google Talk comes with a lean interface and doesn’t do anything but chat and voice-over-ip. I am stil sceptical about VOIP that doesn’t interoperate: Can I call a Google Talk user with a SIP phone? There is a section about »service choice« on the developer pages:

We plan to partner with other willing service providers to enable federation of our services. This means that a user on one service can communicate with users on another service without needing to sign up for, or sign in with, each service.
[…]
We do not have details at this time on when federation will be enabled. But we are working closely with Earthlink and Sipphone to federate EarthLink’s Vling service and Sipphone’s Gizmo Project with the Google Talk service as quickly as possible, while offering the best possible user experience.

There is a interoperability discussion group for Google Talk. There is already a review published by Ars Technica. So if Goolge is interested in interoperation, why don’t they just allow Google Talk users chat with existing Jabber users?