Hangouts

Google's instant messaging tool, Hangouts, can now be used directly in Chrome thanks to this extension, which adds an icon for the app to the right of the address bar where you can quickly access your list of friends.

You can use this to start a conversation with any of the users that are online. If somebody is not online, you can still leave them a message for them to read later and respond whenever they want to.

You can use the same Hangouts interface to choose if you want to save the chat history for your conversations with one particular friend or not, if you want to disable the user notifications, or if you want to archive a whole conversation directly. You can also block someone.

Hangouts is a relatively useful and full-featured instant messaging tool for your browser. Though it is somewhat minimalist, it has all of the features that you need to communicate with your friends or co-workers.