Apparently a day earlier than everybody expected (Tuesday instead of Wednesday) Google Talk was released. It is a beta IM/Voicechat client, but it has some interesting potential as witnessed by question 15 on the FAQ:

  1. What new features are you working on?

We could tell you, but then you’d have to promise to not talk about it… Joking aside, Google Talk is still in beta, and we’re working hard to add features and make improvements. We’re just not quite ready yet to reveal the other cool things we’ve got planned. We can say this, though: we believe strongly in user choice and open standards, and we are committed to letting users access Google Talk using the client and platform of their choice, as well as to enabling our users to talk with users from other service providers.

We also want to keep making Google Talk better and we want your ideas and feedback to help make this happen! Talk to us using the Help link in the Google Talk interface. Let us know what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’d really like.

This leads me to believe that Google Talk is more than just the client: it will be an API that anybody can tie into. Also, this may be the end of any rumours that Google is buying Skype: they’ll just make their own Skype…