We’ve heard several reports over the past week about Google’s upcoming unified chat service. Two separate sets of screenshots have leaked, but both turned out to be fakes on closer examination.

Now thanks to some “trusted sources” of Droid Life, we learned that the service previously rumored to be called “Babble” could actually be named “Babel”. However, according to the report, Babel could just be the internal name of the new messaging service.

The unified service will supposedly work seamlessly across Chrome, Google+, Gmail, Android, and iOS. Google Voice wasn’t mentioned, but we shouldn’t count it out completely.

Here are some of the features that are supposedly coming to Babel/Babble:

Access the same conversation list from anywhere

A new, conversation-based UI

Advanced group conversations

Ability to send pictures

Improved notifications across devices

Obviously, the inspiration for the name (if it turns out to be the final name of the service) would be the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel. Come to think about it, the name would make sense, although there are some negative connotations as well. Not to be discounted is the strong possibility that the name Babel is trademarked.

With Google I/O just weeks away, we should hear more details soon.