Google and AOL today announced that they “agreed, under certain unspecified conditions, to allow users of Google’s recently introduced instant messaging system Google Talk to communicate with users of AOL’s market-leading AIM instant messaging service.”

This means users of Google Talk could some day enter an AIM screenname — such as intelliot@aim.com — and chat directly with AIM users on the AIM client. If and when this happens, there is likely to be a rapid increase in the number of Google Talk users.

Gersh Payzer, a Gmail user who doesn’t use Google Talk but instead uses AIM, said: “I may switch to googleTalk once that happens.”

Further, the Google and AOL partnership was called “a major defensive win for Web search leader Google, depriving Microsoft (Research) of a major customer that would have jump-started its push to compete with Google in the online ad services market.”

Read more at money.cnn.com/2005/12/2…