According to the NYT, Google will release a new "communications tool" on Wednesday this week. Naturally there's been widespread speculation about what this could be. Will Google roll out a national Wi-Fi network? Will they introduce a $100 web-browsing computer? A Google-branded Sidekick device? How about a new IM client? VOIP?

Whatever it is, you can bet it won't be just another product in an already crowded field. Google will put their own mark on the product that will make competitive offerings seem obsolete by comparison. And it will capitalize on a unique Google strength that will be difficult for competitors to copy.

So while we're all wildly speculating, I'll toss my own educated guess into the ring: Whatever form the communications tool takes, Google can establish a giant competitive lead by equiping it with natural language translation capability. Google has provided glimpses into its in-house developed translation tools, and Google blogged yesterday about their capabilities. Google's been under fire from a number of directions recently, but if this technology is ready for deployment, it could be a world-changing event.

Update 8/25/2005 4:55 a.m.: My wild speculation was wrong, at least for the "communication tool" released this morning. Google Talk is an IM client, Windows only, that allows free voice chat. In future releases, Talk will work with other IM clients, or allow other IM providers integrate to the Talk platform. Right now, it requires each user to have a Gmail account. There are no language translation features in this product.