14 DAY TRIAL // Two years ago, when Google bought 5% of AOL one clause of the agreement was about the "enabling [of] Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met."
It took a long time for everything to be in place and the conditions to be met, but it eventually happened and in the following period the two are going to communicate. Unfortunately it's not going to be a true AIM XMPP federation by the looks of it but rather a Jabber transport. That would be the easiest way, in fact, to get it running, but given the way AIM's protocol works (very centered around screen names) it seems that it is the best way to go about it for now.
Those who asked about the possibility to contact MAC and ICQ users should start counting the days until the transport will be properly implemented, as that feature should be available: for ICQ treating the ICQ UIN as if it were a screen name and for mac.com the @mac.com should be easy to include in the screen name.
Whether the new version of GMail that is already in testing and that Ionut Alex Chitu used for the screenshots is going to bring voice chat or not - is yet undisclosed information but one can only hope. What it does bring new to the table is a color scheme, different from the actual GMail 2.0's. The interesting thing is that the new IM transport probably explains why Google did not invest heavily in GTalk client programs. Rather than making another beautiful IM competing with other IM program at the same level, Google focused more on interoperability, so it can use its muscle of aggregating data and searching.
It looks like the new feature is going to make Google's instant messenger more useful and a lot more popular and that's a good thing for all GMail users that felt the need for a standalone desktop instead of mail GTalk, as this looks like one of the first steps to seeing that happen.