I have long thought that Google desperately needs to add an in-house todo list to their Gmail Apps line-up. They likely will before too long. And my wish list for a Google todo app is as follows:

• Ability to integrate right into the Gmail interface (ala Outlook)
• Nested tasks
• Ability to turn an email into a task

Remember The Milk has long been a leader in online todo list management. RTM cannot do nested tasks, but it has a lot of powerful features. RTM also does a great job of integrating with external services and being very portable. You can send a task to your account over Twitter or instant messenger. You can even dictate a task to your account using Jott. What put me over the edge in deciding to start using RTM was a Firefox add-on which allows me to integrate my todo list directly into my Gmail account. Beautiful!

Notice the todo list on the right side of my Gmail screen. It interfaces directly with my RTM account.

The only downside to this is that it depends on the Firefox extension to function. If you access your Gmail account from another browser, your todo list will be missing. This is why it would be so nice for Google to actually do their own that was part of the web interface natively.

The RTM Firefox add-on, though, is a great alternative for the time being.

Google is a long way from being a Microsoft Office replacement. But, they are getting closer little by little. I, for one, am waiting for Google to either develop their own todo list application (which would be simple for them to do) or buy a company like Remember The Milk and integrate it into their Apps offering. It is only a matter of time.