Google Babel shows up in Gmail message and Google Groups
It’s now widely accepted that Google’s new unified chat service is named ‘Babel’. The role that Babel will play between Google’s various chat services, unifying them, is a hat tip in itself to the Tower of Babel, pictured above. Babel is said to allow users to access the same conversation list from anywhere, offer fly-in conversations, advanced group conversations, improve notifications across devices, and of course allow sending pictures.
This morning Patric Dhawaan noticed while cleaning out his Inbox on Gmail a peculiar warning message. He received a popup, listed below, stating all of his conversations have been moved to trash, but some were still available in other Babel chat applications. We’ve independently verified that Google has been internally using Babel for some time. This could mean Patric was chatting with someone that was using Babel internally at Google or this message will soon be standard procedure when deleting conversations.
If you still need additional proof that Babel is the official name of Google’s up and coming messaging service and that Babel is coming sooner than later, head on over to the Chromium Google Group. You’ll find various Google engineers discussing bugs related to Babel.
What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Have gmail open with the old chat (not Babel)
2. Switch tabs to something else and have someone message you on chat
Use Babel. Current behavior is WIA, but based on an older design. New design was reached with GMail and we are matching mole titlebar height at 36px
Based on our 8/9 meeting, this is being investigated: @markdavidscott- Check to see if we can package Babel as an app (not an extension) so if you click the Talk icon on the Chrome OS launcher, it launches the chat roster.
When might we see Babel? Most likely at Google IO 2013 next month. We’re also keeping an eye on April 15th when Eric Schmidt talks at AllThingsD: Dive Into Mobile event.
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