"People who use the Gmail service will be able to send and receive instant messages directly from their e-mail mailboxes, without having to start a separate application or open a separate browser window. The Mountain View company is rolling out the new feature in stages, starting Monday evening," reports The Mercury News.
All Gmail users will have IM accounts tied to their Google accounts. Each person's IM contacts list will sit in the left-hand column of their Gmail inbox. When a mouse cursor hovers over a contact person's name, the user can start a chat session, which will appear in a chat window at the bottom of the inbox.
The article has some numbers for Google's services from Nielsen//NetRatings. It says Gmail was used by 4.5% of active Internet users during December (Yahoo got 33%) while less than 1% used Google Talk (AOL had 33%).
The story concludes:
Google appears to be going against the grain of the Internet industry, which is linking communication services to instant messaging applications. Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have all integrated voice chat into their IM services. And both Yahoo and AOL allow IM users to link to their e-mail services through instant messaging.
