I just downloaded the publicly available beta of Google Talk. They are using your gMail credentials which makes a lot of sense, and made it even easier to get up and running. They are also promising Skype type functionality, but it is not in the beta, which could be pretty cool also.

The really interesting thing from my point of view is that they are embracing XMPP from the beginning, which opens huge possibilites for developers wanting to do something interesting with their service. I guess this should be no suprise by now based on their track record with Search API's and Google Maps API's which in a relatively short period of time have led to some really interesting applications like the Pedometer.

I guess it remains to be seen how how quickly people will run to the latest messenger, I currently have Yahoo and MSN IM on my desktop and have added the third. What I would really like is to get rid of two of them and just use one. I wonder how long that might take...