Does the New York Times have a lead on Google's rumoured introduction of instant messaging with news of a "communications tool" launch this Wednesday?

My first thought is do we need yet another IM standard? My contacts are spread across every IM standard going (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Skype) , so I use the open source Miranda IM client (I used to use Trillian but it doesn't have a plug-in for Skype).