Praveen Arimbrathodiyil blogs here

Google proved its support to the Free and Open Source movement with embracing of Jabber (A open prtocol for Instant Messaging) for its IM and VOIP — Google Talk. Here is the announcement

They stress their support for Open Standards

Open Communications Model
Google believes that users should have a choice in what applications they use for communication. Built to support industry standards, Google Talk enables Google users to connect to the Google Talk service and exchange IMs using any client that does the same, including Trillian, Adium, iChat, GAIM, and Psi.

Another article here

It clearly proves again google’s ability to pioneer in any field they chose. We (me and Swaroop) had a heated debate before about Yahoo opening up its protocol or using Jabber for its IM.

Is Open Source the solution? And the original debate Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox

Now I think Swaroop will have something to say about it.

We had a long flame war last time and I have resumed it after Google talk’s release (See those links to have a look at the flame war we had — There was Sridhar with me for jabber and Sriram for MSN ).