I have running around in Boston, offline almost all of Friday, so I missed the news breaking about Google's move to acquire a 5% stake in AOL. Obviously, as have widely reported, Google is interested in stalling competitors from grabbing its search services within AOL as a defensive strategy. But I am more interested in the possible synergies of the two Giant's social and collaborative tools activities:

[from BBC NEWS | Business | Google 'in exclusive AOL talks']

For its part, Google may be interested in getting access to AOL's e-mail and instant messaging service.

It would strengthen Google's hand against rivals Yahoo and Microsoft, who have well-established webmail and instant messaging services. Google is a relative newcomer to this area with Gmail and Googletalk.

A deal would also allow Google to reach AOL's well-established online communities and benefit from the sale of adverts.

As I have harped on a lot recently, AOL's recent efforts in IM and email have been lackluster, to say the least: more oriented toward increasing user annoyance by installing unwanted browsers and increased billboard space on every interface than innovation.

Google is a hotbed of innovation, tossing out phenomenal products -- like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Desktop-- regularly.

I hope to see the intersection of AOL's enormous AIM user base with a dramatically expanded Gtalk, and another go at Desktop, heading in the direction of Nerdvana (and please don't forget the Mac client, guys).

Only a few companies have all the bits and pieces to actually develop the Nervana client I have been pontificating about for the past year: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The notion is to cement the concept that the buddylist is the center of the Universe 2.0, and to have all manner of things hanging off that representation of our connections to the world, through all sorts of indications of

• Email from a partner? It would be indicated in the buddylist entry next to her name.
• New post on a friend's blog? RSS feeds would not be sequestered off in some disconnected reader, but instead would be integrated into the same Nerdvana buddylist as IM.
• Ditto email. Instead of a completely different interface to alert you to new email, that information would show up associated with your buddylist, where it would automatically be organized by identity.

At any rate, I can hope that one of the areas that Google will focus its considerable capacity to innovate would be this this one, leveraging the AIM user community. Because, after the AIm Triton release (see Steve Case on Its Time To Take It Apart) it's obvious that AOL isn't innovating enough to hold onto its leadership in instant messaging.

Yahoo's recent efforts are intended as an attempt to out-Skype Skype, and Microsoft also has aspirations to become the 21st Ma Bell.

But Google could have completely shifted the dynamics of the future battle for the control of communications in the future, by tapping into the AIM userbase, and launching some truly innovative attacks on what has become increasingly a ho-hum battle. Sure, I want to be able to talk -- voice talk, not just text -- with people on phones, but I don't think that should mean that instant messaging needs to be as tired as the cell phone companies have made the software for cell phones.