Microsoft is discontinuing Windows Live Messenger in 1st quarter 2013, forcing users to switch to Skype. Most would want to switch to Skype anyway with its more advanced capabilities, and the switch makes sense to Microsoft, since they purchased Skype for $8.5 billion last year. However, the move may be seen as typical Redmondian high-handedness by those using Messenger with dial-up. Technically Skype works with dial-up but in practice most agree you really need broadband for decent use. Will everyone view Messenger as replaceable by Skype?
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Member since:2010-06-08
There is no "winner" in this. There are and will be many participants. Saying there will be a "winner" is like saying there will be one e-mail provider eventually. That won't going to happen.
IM networks either will cooperate (read XMPP), or their users will be separated by non interoperability, like e-mail was in the prehistoric computing era. Even AOL started adding [some limited] federated XMPP support to their network. MS actually started some shifts in that direction with Windows Messenger. But they didn't go far enough.
Edited 2012-11-08 04:59 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
"Winner" was already in my post between quotation marks for a reason.
But there's another scenario: a mild balkanisation of sorts (also related to http://www.osnews.com/story/26522/On_Google_a_political_mystery_tha... story), what's already the case - ICQ lives on in CIS, ~western mobile has its WhatsApp, ~eastern mobile has LINE, my place has an IM network essentially limited to this one country. People don't care that much for communicating with non-buddies; conversely, they care where their buddies are, not much about tech aspects.
Then there's... Skype, tying it all together a bit (in the sense that, from what I see, it's "oh, you don't use that IM network? Then let's skype!"); and people seem mostly content with the way things are, they certainly don't care much that Skype for example is closed (oh yeah, and a non-federated ~XMPP network is what took off in western mobile world)
Email emerged, matured in a different era, with vastly different demographic.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Well, unless there's just one "winner" network in all of this, then it will be certainly less messy... and Skype might be the closest to such status ;p
But seriously, the mess mostly got smaller over the last decade, IMHO - most of the smallish IM networks died out.
Edited 2012-11-08 04:01 UTC