Like Twitter, the service is accessible via mobile phone and posts the instant messages to a central Web site. Users can also choose to send messages to other Web sites, blogs and mobile phones, or connect with established instant messaging services like AOL's AIM and Yahoo Instant Messenger, among others.

Founded by Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen, the service launched this February. While financial details of the deal were not disclosed, the move caused some bafflement as to why Google chose Jaiku over the more established Twitter--and whether rivals Yahoo and Microsoft will snap up Twitter or Pownce (a similar service) in the near future.

"Yahoo briefly rolled out a service called Mixd that had some of the same capabilities, but they decided to discontinue it. And Twitter captured a lot of attention when it first came out, but everyone also looked at the service and thought about what value it presented beyond entertainment," said search analyst Greg Sterling. "I think anytime there's an acquisition, competitors will study it and consider whether they should be buying equivalent companies."

Meanwhile, Tech bloggers like Mathew Ingram have debated whether Google chose Jaiku over Twitter because Twitter's founder Evan Williams is a former employee--and other former Google staff have since left to work with Williams as well.

The move comes just two weeks after Google acquired Zingku, a mobile social networking service--and in the midst of its push to bid on chunks of the soon-to-be-available wireless spectrum in the U.S. and U.K. In addition, Google recently extended its AdSense and AdWords advertising programs to the mobile Web and filed a patent (officially in February of 2006, but published this past August) for a text message-based, mobile-friendly payment system called 'GPay.'

Taken together, the search giant's moves have drummed up a firestorm of speculation anticipating a Google-branded mobile phone--complete with an operating system, email, calendaring and social networking applications, and possible ad-supported service.

Recent coverage by mainstream press such as The New York Times noted that the gPhone is not likely to be an actual handset--as the search giant is not in the hardware business, and it would be more costly than necessary. The story credited insider sources for reports that an open-source, Linux-based mobile operating system is the heart of Google's gPhone project.

Whether Google's success will be tied to an actual feature-packed handset remains to be seen--but it's clear that Google's power moves are already impacting the still-evolving mobile space. According to Sterling, the search giant is developing or acquiring all of the pieces--from social networking technology, to search and mapping, to commerce and the overall interface--to ensure that it attains a stronghold on the mobile Web akin to its dominance of the desktop.

"They're diversifying their investments and effectively covering the waterfront," said Sterling. "Google has so many engineers and so much money surrounding mobile that they can work with near equal emphasis on lots of different areas and essentially hedge against risk. While we're not really sure how the mobile Web is going to be fully adopted--whether it's search, email, social networking--Google is quite rightly putting emphasis on the space, and much more aggressively than its competitors."

This news story is important. I recommend that everyone read it.