Google has announced that its Google Talk service is now fully interoperable with other communications services that support the server-to-server XMPP protocol.

This open interoperability, also known as federation, enables any communications service provider to connect to Google Talk, so respective users can talk to each other.

Many service providers world-wide support XMPP federation today, as also thousands of active XMPP-based communications services run by major corporations, ISPs, universities, and individual users. Some of these service providers supporting XMPP federation include Jabber.org, Earthlink, Sipphone's Gizmo Project, Chikka (Philippines), MediaRing (Singapore), Tiscali (Italy), and Netease (China).

Email is an example of a federated network that enables people to communicate with one another, regardless of their email provider. Open interoperability is the first step towards bringing a similar level of openness and user choice to instant messaging and VoIP, and with today's deployment of open server-to-server federation, Google Talk is enabling millions of people world-wide to communicate with each other instantly.