I know you're thinking it. If you're not well you can start now. When is Google going to come out with their own instant message program? They're obviously working on it. Think about it - they started out with creating the world's best search engine, then they bought out my favorite blogging service: Blogger, they own a pretty nifty networking service: Orkut and they've stated they want to infringe upon Microsoft's turf. They clearly need to enter the messenger market in order to really pull the mass market of users from Hotmail to Gmail. I'm aware of Hello the IM that Blogger is pushing for the purpose of photoblogging, though I haven't tried it. But I'm looking for something that can interact with my webmail - a true blue google product. It's only a matter of time until we see "The Google Messenger", and I, for one, cannot wait.

Update: Turns out Google doesn't own Orkut, they are just affiliated. From Orkut's help page:

Why is it called orkut?
Category: General
Updated: 2/9/2004
Answer
orkut.com is a new social networking service named for the Google engineer who developed it, Orkut Buyukkokten. (Orkut is easier to spell and pronounce than Buyukkokten.) This was created as an independent project and is not part of the Google product portfolio.

Update August 2005: Google Talk has just been released.