I use the GTalk client everyday to communicate with fellow WATBloggers and other friends and for a few days I’ve been noticing something very queer.

When I type within GTalk, I get links to other websites. I can’t click on those ads – they are static text. When I continue typing, my words gobble up that static text. So the big question – is Google Testing Ads on GTalk?

A few clarifications from my end:

I am currently using a Mac OS

I use Firefox for Mac

I saw this a few days back but I rubbished it thinking I was hallucinating. It happened again today – and just to make sure I made all the other members of WATBlog and WATConsult stand with me to ensure that they saw it too. So im not crazy!

Noone else in the WAT office has seen this while using GTalk.

Shown below is the picture of the ‘ad’ within GTalk.

If this indeed is advertising then I don’t know if its too effective, It is intrusive; evidently, it is not contextual (I was frantically typing waiting for the link to appear again), it isn’t linked to the site (I cant click through). So what is Google doing by putting random text with a ‘.com’ suffix in my conversations?

Have any of you seen something like this on GTalk recently? Anyone has an alternative theory on why this is happening? Do you have a screenshot? Send me a link. If anyone from Google is reading this please confirm – or provide an explanation as to why it’s happening.

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