Outdated information

Groupchats in google talk are now done through hangouts, which is not XMPP/jabber.

The instructions in this page are (probably) no longer useful.

There is currently no way to access hangouts groupchats.

Group chats in bitlbee using gtalk account

1. First of all you need to generate a uuid. There are atleast two ways to generate a uuid:

2. Now that you have generated a UUID, you need to tell bitlbee to add a chatroom for you. The syntax is: 

chat add <account-id> <room> [<channel>]

<account-id> is the numeric ID listed by 'account list' command to bitlbee control channel. <room> is the chatroom which has the format: private-chat-{uuid}@groupchat.google.com (Replace the uuid by the uuid that you generated). [<channel>] is the name of channel used to identify the chatroom inside bitlbee. This should be unique for every new chatroom being created.

Here's a sample command to add a chat room: 

chat add 1 private-chat-d0f2a60e-6200-4f2c-9fb6-0bc4793cb793@groupchat.google.com gtalk

3. You can now use 'chat list' to see a list of all the chatrooms known by BitlBee.

4. Now, to join the chatroom, type this in bitlbee control channel: 

/join &gtalk

5. To invite other users to this chatroom, give them the uuid that you generated and tell them to repeat step 2 and 4 in this article.

That's it! Happy group chatting :D