It is not often that the big G's applications are described as braindead. But Google talk chatback badge sure is.

What happens when you use the chatback widget, it shows your gtalk handle's presence correctly. So far so good, now a visitor comes, clicks on it which that opens a new browser based 'chat' window where the visitor is called guest. Now I am sure if someone had a look at livechat used by most webhosting companies and gotten some clue the 'guest' could have been allowed to have a temporary handle or optionally allowed to sign into their google account based on their browser's cookies. There is no captcha to dissuade spammers from sending you random messages, yes Google's blogger has that but not gtalk chatback. Now lets assume you still think that having a chatback badge on your blog/website is a good idea and you do get a visitor clicking on your gtalk chatback badge, however you can't converse with this guest using your regular instant messenger, instead you get a largish URL in your messenger client window clicking on which opens a browser based 'chat' window for you. Did no one in the gtalk chatback badge team ever use twitter's jabber bot application or ever tried out any of other jabber bot applications. Has the inevitable slide into mediocrity begun at Google, their betas used to be much more awe-inspiring.