Adding to its reputation for cherry-picking the best and the brightest, Google has snagged longtime AOL IM developer Justin Uberti and assimilated him into the Googleplex.
Justin posted the news on his popular Tales of a Running Man blog on Saturday. The news is interesting given that Google and AOL plan to allow their instant messaging apps to communicate next year. AOL’s AIM has an installed user base of about 43 million, making it the third-most used IM platform after Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Google Talk has less than 4 million users, according to ComScore.
Uberti was involved with, among other projects, AOL’s Open AIM initiative, which gives smaller companies, Web communities and developers access to the code base of AIM.
Besides picking off AOL developers, Google has proven adept at grabbing Microsoft employees too.