Google doesn't exactly have an "IRC on crack" product though? Also, I find GTalk's routing to be spotty when it comes to multiple devices - it's quite common for me to receive messages from coworkers at night and have them route to my work machine instead of one that's active on the GTalk account at home.

Nowadays we use GroupMe for things that must be read in a timely manner. It'd be nice if we could use GTalk for it (this is a Google Apps GTalk account, not a public one).