[n_are_q]

Right, that makes sense, thank you for the explanation. I guess interopertability between the two services implied to me they could speak eachothers' protocols in entirety (at least ideally), so i pictured gtalk talking to the aim chat room via its protocol. Oh well.

BTW this has implications for google apps users since there are no usable persistent chat rooms in gtalk. Well i guess any users, but for businesses chat rooms are more useful than for casual users I think.