The Reuters article AOL, Google ad pact to include video, instant msgs states

America Online said Google had agreed to invest $1 billion to take a 5 percent stake in AOL, as part of an enhanced pact where Google will move beyond text-based advertising to allow AOL to sell graphical ads to Google's fast-growing ad network.

The stake effectively values AOL at $20 billion, a key benchmark should Time Warner elect to spinoff or sell a part of its Internet unit in response to dissident shareholder Carl Icahn's proxy campaign to break up the company.

Terms of the deal call for AOL to make more of its Web sites searchable via Google search, including a plans to feature AOL's premium video services within Google Video, a way of searching for Web-based video programming.

They also said they had 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 is a very interesting development when combined with the recent release of the Libjingle library which allows developers to use the Google Talk API. Does this mean it'll soon be possible for any developer who grabs Libjingle off of SourceForge to be able to integrate the ability to instant message with any AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) into their applications free of charge? That is definitely game changing. I haven't looked at Libjingle [for obvious reasons] but I am interested in comments on whether my analysis is on the mark or not from people who've tried it.

I'll definitely be watching the Google Talk blog and Joe Beda's blog to keep on top of the developments in this space. Interesting stuff indeed. Perhaps I'll soon be able to integrate chatting with your AIM buddies into RSS Bandit ?