AOL'S AIM INTEGRATES WITH GOOGLE TALK

For eons two realms have been divided: AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk. AIM debuted among American Online employees in 1995; Google Talk premiered just a decade later. By 2007 you could combine your buddy lists, but that required also logging in twice.

Now our long global nightmare has come to an end, and as AOL says "in the next few days" users of both services will be able to chat without logging in twice. One login to rule them all is the promise, though there's little explanation of just how this will work.