Interoperability is coming …. and I may be alive to see
Thursday, July 13th, 2006Yahoo! and Microsoft Bridge Global Instant Messaging Communities: Beta testing of unprecedented interoperability between Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger with Voice lets users communicate across IM services.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — July 12, 2006 — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: “YHOO”) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) today will begin limited public beta testing of interoperability between their instant messaging (IM) services that enable users of Windows Live® Messenger, the next generation of MSN® Messenger, and Yahoo!® Messenger with Voice to connect with each other. This interoperability — the first of its kind between two distinct, global consumer IM providers — will form the world’s largest consumer IM community, approaching 350 million accounts.1
One of the most frustrating things about IM is that people on different systems can not communicate. AOL(link), Yahoo! and Microsoft have kept it this way. Only Google has opened it network in a standard way that allows interoperability. Unfortunatly NONE of the large IM services have taken GOOG up on the offer yet. Well YHOO and MSFT are holding a limited public beta to test interoperability between those two services. Naturally they wish to combine forces and take on AIM(link) which I believe is still the dominant IM and the ever looming threat of Google. Maybe someday ALL of the big IM services will embrace XMPP or some other open standard that allows any service to “talk” with any other service and we will have a truly ubiquities IM communication that would surpass the phone, the postal system and even email. And hopefully this will happen before I loose my sight to cataracts.
