Microsoft announced on Tuesday it'll soon integrate support for Google Talk, Google's instant messaging service, into its Outlook.com website after hearing demands from its 400 million users.
The feature will roll out over the next few days, according to Microsoft, but the company's timing of the announcement right before Google's annual Google I/O developer's conference is curious. Google is rumored to announce its "Babel" service, which will link Google Talk and Hangouts under one roof, during the conference.
"We believe people choose to use many different services and that our role is to help them connect to the people who matter most, wherever they are," Douglas Pearce wrote in a post on Microsoft's blog. "But we heard that some of you who switched over from Gmail still want to chat with friends stuck on Gmail. Today, we're excited to announce that you can now also chat with your Google friends."
The Chat messaging option works just as Outlook.com's Facebook and Skype messaging options do. Simply open the messaging pane, grant Microsoft access to your Google account and you're done. Your Google contacts will appear in the right pane, and you can click on any contact to start a chat.
The feature will also be integrated with Microsoft SkyDrive –– Microsoft's cloud storage offering –– calendar, Outlook's web portal and People contact list.
But is that it?
Not quite. Microsoft's Dharmesh Mehta, senior director of Outlook.com, told The Verge the company will expand its messaging options to include video and voice with Google users if there is sufficient enough demand. And it shouldn't be too much of problem if that demand is realized: Google's APIs are fairly open to most companies.
No word, yet, on whether or not the company is considering options to bring Google applications to Windows 8 and Windows 8 mobile systems.
Outlook.com is the heir to Microsoft's Hotmail service, which was shut down in early May after a prolonged, and at times difficult, port of millions of users between the two services. Mehta said the Microsoft team overseeing Outlook.com is looking into supporting Mac users with a desktop client the Redmond-based company's web mail service.
