They want to know everything

It appears that Google, tired of being reminded by its users, has finally implemented an important feature available on any other XMPP instant messaging server for its GTalk service: offline messages. And it has pushed the limit of integration by making these offline messages directly readable in GMail, as well as through any XMPP client.

All is good, all is great, until one reads the last line of the post:

Your Google Talk account needs to have a Gmail inbox with chat history enabled in order to receive offline messages, so make sure to turn it on now!

The offline message storage feature is only active if the chat messages history, which record all your conversations, is enabled in your account. In short, to capture the last message sent to someone who has just disconnected, Google needs to capture your entire chat history in real time. Come on! You are telling me no one in the army of Google's PhD level developers has been able to come up with a simpler solution to capture just these last second messages? I find this rather incredible.

Unless this scheme has been devised on purpose, forcing indirectly those who have made this very useful feature a top request to turn on the chat message history, and allow Google crawlers to search these messages…

Technorati Tags: XMPP, Google Talk, Digital privacy, Antecipate