Google has announced the release of a new API for building Talk bots on top of Google App Engine, Google’s product that lets developers create and host web apps on the Google infrastructure.

Google has released version 1.2.5 of the App Engine software developer kit (SDK) for Python and Java. This happens to be the company’s first simultaneous release for both. The API includes XMPP (also referred to as Jabber) support, which is an open standard for instant messaging. This comes in the form of the XMPP API for both SDKs.

"Like the other APIs that App Engine provides for developers, XMPP is built on the same powerful infrastructure that serves other Google products," says Google on the App Engine Blog. "In this case, we take advantage of the servers that run Google Talk. This new API allows your app to exchange messages with users on any XMPP-based network, including (but not limited to!) Google Talk."

Developers involved with the preview of Google Wave can also use the API to build bots that interact with waves. Wave will be available to schools and businesses this fall, by the way.

"We’re very proud of our first XMPP release, but there’s still more work to do," says Google. "In the future we hope to provide even more functionality to apps, such as user status (presence) and info on new subscriptions."

More information about the API and SDKs can be found in this post. There are links to documentation and release notes available there.