I don't typically write about Google's products because, hell, there are enough geeks out there to wax poetic (or not) about the latest acronym-powered point releases.

But Google's new Talk gadget, which lets you chat with friends from your Google personalized homepage, caught my eye for its ability to play YouTube videos within the chat window. That's pretty smooth. And it's one of those Google improvements—like Gmail and Maps—that demonstrates the iterative ingenuity of their engineers. I imagine it won't be long before this feature is added to desktop IM clients.

I wonder, though, as we wander down the video advertising path, how Google will incorporate this kind of video views into their ad rates. I don't know the precise figures, but I would assume that a substantial amount of viral activity is spread via IM. If you can watch the clip in the IM client, why would you go to YouTube.com? Don't tell me you go for the comments. That's like saying you go to the psych ward for the conversation.

I also wonder if these types of external YouTube views figure differently into the rates charged to advertisers. IOW, is a view in an IM client worth more or less than a view in a blog post embed, and are both of those views worth less than a view on the site? Can YouTube even differentiate? Can the advertisers?