Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to make their two instant-messaging programs work together, a partnership that could threaten market leader America Online, people familiar with the situation said.
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My first thought when reading this was, "Finally!" It seems utterly ridiculous that it's taken MSN, AOL, and Yahoo this long to create some sort of connectivity between themselves on something as simple as text messaging (video is a different issue). Not allowing intercommunication is clearly an issue of these companies failing to provide for their customers in the hopes of dominating the other players.
After a second of consideration, though, I thought, "Who cares?" This would have been great years ago, but at this point, every platform has Gaim, and other clients that can connect to all these services. So, no big deal, I guess.
Unless, of course, they're working on audio/video, in which case, it's about time.
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MSN Messenger and only MSN Messenger... ICQ was the only one in late 90, but Mirabilis/AOL destroyed the client with all the bloat, instability, ugliness and useless features... them, MSN Messenger came alone with a clean, easy to use and stable client and conquered the market fast as lightning (another issue is that most people can't remember the ICQ numbers as they can remember the e-mails)... Also, MSN Messenger has a LOT of appel to feminine market with all this "cuteness"... you have to see to undestand how MUCH they like it...
I do prefer ICQ as a protocol (the client is terrible these days... I can't say enough to describe how bad it is! I'm using Miranda IM for some years because of it... and because Miranda's very very nice!)... but there's some much versions and incompatibilities... MSN Messenger's protocol is more standalized between clients and provide a better overall experience for all users (file-transfers DO work, even if they need to use IM's server as gateway)... The things a miss mostly is offline messages and "visible to" options... but I do agree that average joes don't botter with them.
Google has a LOT of market share with orkut in Brazil... if they have a small, simple, beauty client compatible with MSN Messenger and integrated with orkut, they can convert a LOT of people...
...again... Google Talk is nice, but far from replacing MSN Messenger the way it is right now (and I hope they make Jabber server-to-server soon too!)
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With Microsoft in talks with AOL as well, could this is be a precursor to some gigantic Microsoft+Yahoo+AOL internet leviathan alliance type thingy.
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It would be interesting to see what happens to the *nix and web version of Yahoo Messenger if an agreement is reached.
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How will this affect the IM on mobile phones?
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Do AOL, Yahoo & Microsoft generate any serious revenue from their IM clients? I always thought it was about branding (maybe vendor lock-in, to an extent), and the money from the ads was more of a "nice extra" for the companies (surely, in Microsoft's case, the revenue from carrying ads in Messenger must be insignificant to their other income streams.)
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They may end up sharing a common protocol, but I find it hard to believe that is the only thing on the cards.
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2005-08-19
Seems like AOL just isn't cutting it anymore. It's a shame because I have AOL at home and really like the service, but I just don't think they can compete now that everyone is turning to broadband. What they do have that no one else has is AOL instant messenger, and the majority of IMers seem to use that and not Yahoo or Google.
Member since:2005-06-29
and the majority of IMers seem to use that and not Yahoo or Google.
In the US maybe, yes, but the US ain't the world. In the Netherlands, for instance, MSN Messenger has a marketshare of 99.99999%. IM'ing isn't called "IM'ing" or "chatting" here; it's called "MSN'ing". And in Poland, I believe Jabber is pretty major.
Never say that someone or something has the majority of users simply because in one country they're the most popular.
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2005-07-06
I spent the last couple of years working in a middle school, the kids there pretty much exclusively used MSN. I think they like the ability to have sentence-long nicknames. It's especially funny when the nicknames are so long that the line wraps before the message text even shows up.
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2005-08-29
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I know alot of people that used to use AOL but have moved to Yahoo since adding all the voice, webcam and other media features.
I myself have pretty much dropped AIM for Yahoo and Jabber.
I'm actually suprised MSN has a good following else where cause I thought there client to be a bit cumbersome compared to yahoo. Thats just me.
www.meebo.com, for those at work with no IM client 
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hi google
why dont you get in to the IM business , i know that you know that it is a big thing. i know your new messaging service , but seriously consider videoconferansing and telephony/conservation. big money there if you sell the out/in service and you have the networks/infrastructure.
and dont forget it should be crossplattform, should work in *bsd, linux, mac and windows !
why not opensource/openstandard
sincerely
a google/gmail/picasa etc user
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2005-07-06
Most businesses that I've done project work for use MSN internally; looking at my contact list (Trillian) now I'd say more than 80% of it is MSN contacts...and almost all of those are professional contacts. The rest are divied up equally between AOL and Y!, and those are mainly friends and family. I haven't had someone ask me about ICQ in years...I'm surprised it's still around.
More than likely the reason that AOL seems to be so popular in the US is simple name brand recognition (hence the "A" in AOL ;-)). Whenever I don't have access to Trillian, I always fire up MSN messenger...of all the clients I've used it just seems to have a more polished feel to it, so if I had to pick one that would definitely be it.
That all being said, it is nice to see MS playing nice with competitors, especially Y!.
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I think you could be right. The big guys fear open standards, they know if it catches on they will have no control, and google backing it gives it a big push in that direction.
I think if you compare Jabber/XMPP to http+html you could see what the future IM could be capable of!
As for me, still using Kopete, which has some great features like meta-contacts, and am signed in to 6 im accounts at once. When I was in college (in midwest), everyone referred to msn'ing or hey what's your msn address?
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Aside from the IM clients given by the providers, the really popular IM clients can connect to all networks. I´m perfectly happy with Kopete when on Linux and uses Miranda on that odd ocasions when I´m using Windows. So, from my standpoint, there is no difference between my contacts except that they have different icons on the contact list... :-)
I agree that AOL messed up with ICQ. ICQ was huge here in Brazil, before MSN came into play. Now I only see one or two ICQ contacts online once per month or so. AOL made the client virtually unusable to the point that alternative clients were much more desirable to connect to the ICQ network than the official one.
I´m actually surprised that AIM holds its own against MSN on the USA, since MSN virtually uses Windows as a stepstone (OK, that´s Windows Messenger but everybody knows that this only serves to get the looser hooked to the service and then "suggests" him to upgrade to the real thing).
