Google Annouces AIM on Gmail

In a press release, Google announces that AIM has been integrated into Gmail.

Starting today, you can exchange instant messages with your AIM friends via the chat function in your Gmail account.

Gmail is one of Google's biggest endeavors aside from being a powerful search engine. In terms of impact on the World Wide Web, Gmail easily stands with the likes of other Google properties such as Adsense, Youtube and Google Earth.

The launch of the Gmail service by Google changed the entire electronic mail industry for the better. Each free member of Goggle's email service got a robust 1 gigabyte for storage space for emails; at that time, email services only offered a handful of megabytes for free members.

Gmail set a whole new standard for the industry. Email service competitors including Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail were forced to expand their storage spaces for emails in order to stay competitive with Google and Gmail.

Gmail was released as an invitation-only beta to the public in 2004 and was officially launched earlier this year. It has quickly become of the most, if not the most, popular email services.

In the other corner, we have AIM (abbreviated from America Online Instant Messenger), which arguably had a bigger impact in the instant messaging industry than Gmail has with the email industry. Having been around since the early days of the Internet in 1997, the AIM instant messaging service has been an iconic figure in American pop culture. Most famous of which are the trademark sounds AIM makes when sending and receiving messages.

With the new feature implemented, AIM and Gmail, the two giants of their industry, are now one. Although instant messaging in Gmail has been available since early 2006, the addition of AIM will help bolster the chat feature. You don't need to make a new account if you already have an existing AIM and Gmail account. To use AIM via Gmail, just take the following steps: