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Yahoo Shutting Out Third-Party IM Clients?
prostoalex writes "Following the lead of America Online's previous attempts and MSN's actions, Yahoo is planning an update that may cut out third-party providers like Trillian or Gaim. If you're a current Trillian user with a valid Yahoo ID, you probably noticed the new welcome message: 'Yahoo! is upgrading to its newest version of Yahoo! Messenger on September 24, 2003. The upgrade is part of an ongoing process to continually enhance the overall quality of the Yahoo! Messenger service for our millions of users'." Update: 09/18 01:17 GMT by S : Trillian has just released a patch that updates the IM software "...to the newest Yahoo! and MSN protocols, to remove the recent upgrade messages."
I think that these companies should support third party applications or, atleast, ports to differnt operating systems. Anything that expands your marketshare, right?
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where is the economic incentive to provide an IM service that everybody in the world can use? Servers do cost money... any ideas on how one could fund this?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
....as long as those users agree with our choice of OS and platform. I run OS X and the standard Yahoo! client is lame. It's a cheap port of the windows client. Third party programmers have filled the gap; it's a shame to see Yahoo! cut these clients off in order to preserve the illusion of control.
when IM first became popular and ICQ was the only major one, i used it and there were never any problems, now everyone i know uses something different it just gets to be a big hastle...
i think ill stick to email and IRC
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
But here's wishing that the warning message is just a bunch of smoke to get people to fall in line with the official client.
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Wonderful, another few years of communication incompatibilities until one winner emerges. The problem with computers is that we need monopolies. Universal standards would work in a perfect world, but you would need an authoritative government implementing them. Corporate monopolies are not an ideal solution, but they are slightly better. My opinions on Microsoft have changed a great deal for the better over the past few years. I used to be as gung ho against the big bad giant corporation as anyone. But there is nothing that is going to replace the behemoth.
Since when are Instant Messaging Service Providers obligated to keep backwards compatibility?
I think this is a good move by Yahoo! with no evil intentions whatsoever. They are simply upgrading their protocol, and it's not like gAIM or Trillian cannot update to such new protocol too.
This is not like Microsoft's attempt which is trying to extort money through licensing. Money, that most open source clients, don't have.
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Its only a matter of time before yahoo does the same. people choose thier IM client based on personal preference. Id rather not have 3 IM clients loaded at the same time and cant expect people to switch over from thier preferred IM protocol for me. If they have switched in the past 5 years or more for me, I cannot expect that theyll do so now.
Theyll make some changes in thier protocol to attempt to prevent 3rd party clients from connecting. itll be a few hours to a few days before there is a patch so that the 3rd party clients can again connect. At some point.. its just a waste of money.. for very little percieved return.. (advertising bullshit) that they get from the oem clients.
All Hail Trillian.
I can see the big players like microsoft and aol trying this, but why yahoo. Last I heard they were way behind aim/icq and msn in usage. Right now my gaim has 41 icq users, 27 aim users, 6 jabber users, 5 msn users, and 1 yahoo user. The only thing yahoo stands to accomplish with this is to lose people like me as users, and possible people who want to talk to me.
Shouldn't yahoo be doing things to try and increase the nubmer of users on their system. Or even trying to shift instant messages to an open system to nullify the advantage aol and microsoft have over them.
If I were them I would be tring to get together with other smaller instant messaging services like gadu-gadu, and shift to jabber. Leverage the other yahoo services (and the @yahoo.com on their jabber address) as a reason to use the yahoo client. There service would be much more attractive since you get much more users to talk to. The same benifits apply to the other small guys who would join them.
Competing like this with webmail has worked well for them, why not try the same thing with instant messages.
I agree with what you say, but Trillian is a company, they actually profit off other peoples networks and so I dont agree with Trillian.
I'd like to see Trillian sued or driven out of business myself. Look, if Trillian were open source freeware who would care? I dont think MSN and Yahoo would be doing this if it were just GAIM or even Jabber, the reason this happens with Trillian is because Trillian is a company, its that simple.
I would do the same thing if some other company were getting rich off my network. Ad revenue is one thing, and only AOL/Yahoo can be blamed for losing out on the Linux ad revenue etc, but when it comes to Trillian theres no reason for Trillian to exist.
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What lockouts do, however, is annoy the rest of the user base. Some people won't want to upgrade. Some people don't want to use Yahoo!'s software or can't. Most people don't want to be warned about impending protocol changes every time they login. Almost everyone wants to be able to talk to their friends, regardless of their friends' software choices. These lockouts hurt the people using the official client just as much as everyone else. The only way Yahoo!'s going to stay a step ahead of hackers is to kill their service: repeated protocol changes will do it.
What needs to happen is cooperation. IM providers can make life easier on developers by offering specs. These benefits trickle down to users, since they always have the latest and greatest. Developers can return the favor to the IM providers by agreeing to introduce branding. The IM provider benefits overall by not threatening its userbase with lockouts, in addition to the publicity (and credibility) boost among geeks and others. "Don't like our software? Yahoo! supports the Open Source and Free Software movements by providing protocol documentation for our popular services. Read more here!" Imagine that!
One has to wonder if AIM would be faring better had AOL committed to this strategy, rather than going only a quarter of the way.
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- "Third-party clients will likely be affected, but we're trying to communicate with other providers around the common goal of opening up the IM community," [Mary Osako] said.
What can I say? I'm a nice guy. Now fuck off.I can think of a few... /commands, etc.) My grandmother can use IM just by clicking the pretty buttons.
1: Network unification: IM has AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, and Jabber. IRC has more networks than I can count. The odds of your friends all being on the right IM network are much better than all being on the same IRC net.
2: The buddy list. On IRC it's harder to track people coming and going (if they're not in your channel). IM makes it easy to tell who is online no matter who they're talking to.
3: Fewer opportunites for lamers to ruin/take over your chat. IRC channels are taken over by script kiddies all the time. My IM session has never been owned.
4: Simplicity. IRC takes a little skill and experience to use successfully (memorizing
The bottom line, I think, is convenience. IRC could be made to do almost everything that IMs can do, it would just take a lot more effort to set it up.
0 1 - just my two bits
So it is left to Yahoo! to push the idea that the best way to win is to provide an open product. Most will use the proper client, as most just do not know how to do any differently. Hopefully the MS people will switch to the Yahoo! client when they find they cannot communicate with their friends.
We should also take this as a lesson if MS ever gets their way with email. We will only be able to email our friends who use the latest version of Outlook. That version of Outlook will filter spam, which MS defines as any UCE that has not paid a monetary tribute to the beast.
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Everyone but the IM providers would be better off with a global IM standard that wasn't controlled by a single corporate identity. ISPs could easily take the load of running an IM server, and fair competition in the client market would be possible.
IM could be a service like email, but with a modern protocol and without the spam. Except it isn't because some heavyweight companies have found a way to create revenue by keeping it as it is.
But don't you still need a Yahoo account to IM with? When you sign up for a Yahoo account, you are still signing up with a Yahoo account.
Isn't this like arguing that if I sign up for a Yahoo account, I should use Yahoo's browser to check my email, instead of IE, Netscape, or [name your favorite browser]?
There are still adds when you log into yahoo to check your email. They still have your information. Etc etc etc.
If it costs so much to run an IM server, and they cannot recoup their costs, perhaps they need to rethink their business model. Perhaps they need to overhaul the system altogether and design a protocol that is cheaper to maintain, etc.
To put it in perspective, imagine how telephone service would be if my Kyocera cellphone could not receive calls from Nokia phones. I know we have to use different cells that use the various schemes, but if the providers didn't gate traffic to each other, nobody would use them. The only reason we put up with this crap from the IM services is because (most of us) don't pay anything for them.
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The answer to this is very simple.
Not all geeks only have geek friends. For example, right now my AIM buddy list has 173 people on it. Some of these are coworkers, some are family and a vast majority of them are just random friends. I could probably name about a dozen or two dozen people out of that number that use IRC/are capable enough to use IRC. However, random cute girl from English class doesn't use IRC, and is not going to bother to learn how to use a much more confusing protocol.
If the entire world were made up of Slashdot browsers and Linux geeks, your arguement would make sense. But, it simply isn't. The majority of the people out there are Windows users who don't WANT to know what's actually going on. And that is also the majority of my buddy list.
I'm sorry, but random cute girl from English class doesn't give a fuck about "Open Standards", etc, etc. She just wants to chat with her friends. And I want to chat with her. So, I will continue to use GAIM to talk on AIM.
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