Google has issued a new “Labs Edition” of Google Talk. It pulls in some features from the Google Talk gadget — but, unfortunately, drops file transfer (which I never use) and voice chat (which I do), so I’ll not be downloading it any time soon.
Google suffers a bit from a plethora of Chat/Talk clients, just in the Windows platorm — there’s a downloadable Talk client, the new Labs Edition thereof, the Chat functionality in GMail, and the Google Gadget version (which is Flash-based in a browser). Each has a slightly different set of functions, though they all fundamentally work together, but it does make it difficult — even though I like the client quiet a bit.
Meanwhile, no sign of any changes or improvements in the problems with Google Calendar Sync for Outlook. Disappointing.
UPDATE: More official Google news on the subject.
More commentary.