I logged into my gmail inbox today, and noticed a new link on the left sidebar along with "Inbox," "Sent Mail," and the others - it said "Chats." Clicking it revealed a message that said "Get Google Talk so you can chat and make free voice calls with friends. Your Google Talk chat history can be automatically saved right here in your Gmail account. Also coming soon: chat in Gmail!" There's a picture of how it will look when chat is integrated with Gmail. Guess then there's a reason for anyone who was holding out on switching email addresses to make the jump. Is this the beginning of the end for AIM?

Also from the help page,

"But wait, there's more...

• Add contacts and invite your friends to chat from Quick Contacts
• See when your friends are online
• Set your status to busy, sleepy, angry or whatever. Even sneezy.
• Get Google Talk to make free voice calls too. It's completely synchronized with Quick Contacts
• Go off the record when you're chatting so nothing gets saved to anyone's Gmail account"

Click to enlarge

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