Yesterday I was held up by a big bunch of problems I had to take care of in a clients network, and the end of the afternoon went up in smoke after I had picked up my brand Spanking new macbook pro :P. So you haven't heard from me yesterday. Sorry about that.
Today I have some interesting news, as it seems that Google might open up it's IM platform to other networks, enabling chat with people outside the Gtalk network. That is thrilling news. In order to do this you would need Jabber Transports and a server to take care of the traffic. The interesting fact is that Gtalk already features Jabber Transports !

It's already visible in the new features now available in Gmail contacts : you can add people's IM adresses from other networks. My guess it that it won't take long...

Source : Google OS Blog