I have played with Google Talk a bit more, since first getting onto it yesterday, including downloading the PC native client on Virtual PC. Given my laptop set-up today -- no head mike, not even my iSight -- on the road, working out of hotel room, it's hard to judge sound quality on the push-to-talk feature, but it is clear that this is meant to be a direct competitor of Skype, the upstart that has roiled the instant messaging world with its meteoric growth in the past year.

I was also surprised that Talk is not integrated into Google Desktop, at least not on the current released version. This is the future, however. The plug-in architecture they've developed should make that a snap. A little more ambitious to tightly integrate instant messsaging -- presence, for example -- into other apps, like gmail. And that would make the gmail solution competitive on the enterprise front with Microsoft and IBM offerings, although they do need to create a small client for offline email. management.

What about Talk capabilities integrated into Orkut, and Blogger? Many, many integration opportunities. Nerdvana is on the way?

Obviously, I expect to see video in Talk before you can catch a breath.

I am unhappy that Google has opted to not roll out a Google Desktop app for Mac , but at least with the iChat Jabber integration, I can ride the Google Talk wave a little. I hope the Apple and Google folks figure out how to make the cross-talk work... hey, wait. It might be working already, and I just don't know. more to follow.