Google has combined their mail feature with their chat feature: Gmail +talk. Now you can chat with your Gmail buddies without ever leaving your inbox. It also gives the option to save all your chats so you can search through them just like your mail. This will not have a large affect on the way I do things because I usually download my mail rather than use Google’s online interface. I’m curious, however, what type of affect this will have on Gmail users in general. There seems to be quite a potential out there for users who email a lot but have not ever joined the instant messaging throng. If you are about to send a quick email to a co-worker or friend but you see they are online, you could just as easily send them an instant message and have a quick conversation. Along the same lines, this might change people who live through their email but also through the phone. If they see someone else is online, instead of calling they can quickly chat and that way there will be a record of exactly who says what. This is a nice convenient addition by Google and I can see multiple uses and a future for it, but at the moment it doesn’t really matter to me.
