The resourceful Om Malik figures out a key part of the Google puzzle.  He claims that the new product to be introduced by the search engine giant will be an IM client using Jabber (self-proclaimed "the Linux of IM" - hey, if their stuff works for AOL and Orange, then why not Google?).  Om also points to a couple of extra hints: the talk.google.com URL, which redirects you to a google.com/talk with a 404 message (site not found) with a secure XMPP server waiting for connections. 

In the meantime, here are the del.icio.us tags on Google & Jabber...  this will be an ongoing thread.

Note: on the above link, there is a good piece by Sean Kerner highlighting, among other things that with the Blogger acquisition, Google also got some IM technology (called Hello).