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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."
That "to continually enhance the overall quality" almost always translates to "to make it so that you can't save money by switching to another brand" or "to screw you over by offering less service for the same price"?
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
For the free Trillian 0.74, a patch "E" was released today that supports the new Yahoo and MSN.
If you have the auto-download check feature enabled in Trillian, you should be notified automatically.
Although I hate to see the third party applications being blocked, I can see the view that Yahoo! and the others are taking. This is their service, meant to be used with their clients, in order to gain revenue through advertisements and whatnot. When those clients aren't being used, and the advertisements aren't rolling in the cash, they cut off the moochers.
I actually don't like Trillian and gAIM, mainly because of the lack of features for MSN that came out in Messenger 6. There's other reasons, I suppose. I might just give Trillian Pro 2.0 a try though.
My two cents.
Insert witty Slashdot sig here.
There's no economic incentive to operate IRC networks either, yet they continue to thrive.
Someone out there is willing to donate resources to make it possible.
. . . but I will change IM depending on which ones are supported on my OS.
I'm part of a couple of Yahoo fantasy leagues. I use Yahoo IM to talk to my fellow owners. Now, I don't use any of the paid-for features of Yahoo, but I know my league-mates do. Do Yahoo think that making it harder for people to talk on Yahoo will
a) Increase the density of users willing to spend money on yahoo, or
b) Decrease the density of users willing to spend money on yahoo?
The usefulness of a centralised IM system is the square of the users, IIRC. Getting rid of those who don't have clients that work affects the network more than just the loss of those people.
"...part of an ongoing process to continually enhance the overall quality of the Yahoo!"
At least the move wasn't done under the guise of SECURITY like MS. You know, I almost single handedly took down MS's whole network by using GAIM. I really shouldn't have used the "buddy pounce" feature so much. ;-)
Gahem if u look at w3c rfs you will realize that most IM protocols are not closed but open and in public domain..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Wonderful, another few years of communication incompatibilities until one winner emerges. The problem with computers is that we need monopolies.
Fighting against each other until only one surviver is left over isn't the only way to live. Cooperation is possible if the players do not assume that they have to kill all the other players to be successful. Strange concept, isn't it?
Universal standards would work in a perfect world, but you would need an authoritative government implementing them.
The internet didn't need a government to develop universal standards.
If there is anything at all that qualifies as a right, it's the ability to communicate with others freely. That is why removal of the freedom to communicate is quite possibly the harshest aspect of imprisonment. And that is why most of the free world regards regimes with repressive communication policies as being anti-freedom.
When a company provides a means of communication as part of their product, disallowing their customers from using that medium to communicate with non-customers is vastly worse than a mere business decision, if the tool is at all popular then it hits at the heart of people's daily lives.
It seems that politicians are too busy underpinning big business these days to notice unimportant issues like their citizens losing part of their ability to communicate freely. Well, I guess it's in the hands of the voters.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Develop a distributed IM network so that anybody can set up their own server and connect to anybody else using the same protocol, regardless of what server they are connected to (like email, but faster). And there is no requirement to open your server to anybody but yourself. That would be a good IM system.
Oh wait--it seems someone beat us to it.
They say they're doing this to protect their subcribers from SPAM?!?!? How obscene is THAT?
No, they're trying to keep us Trillian (and other similar third-party client) users from using their bug-ridden "service" without paying for it by watching their authorized SPAM.
Mnem
"Alien Anal Probes?!? Where do I sign up?"
What is it that IM clients do that IRC can't? In other words, why do people bother with proprietary instant messaging systems when IRC (appears to) do the same things, plus a whole lot more?
Is it the graphical smileys? What?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Following that logic, Slashdot should have to pay websites to link to them. I mean, we're wasting tons of bandwidth and transfer because of that. Plus, we cause servers to crash. Don't you think Slashdot owes those websites that it links to?
hey!
They aren't obliged, of course, but they're silly not to. It just ticks people off, and IM software is so simple it's impossible to weed out 3rd party software. I'm sure I'm not the only programmer who had to write an IM server/client in Networking 352.
I can't really see any way they could have "Accidentally" broken backwards compatibility. I'm sure there could be a way, but at the heart it's about the most basic type of network communication. There really isn't much to change, unless they were going to try and make it secure, which, of course, is massively unlikely.
Just one more futile attempt to keep people from improving on what you started. Give it up. It's human nature.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Whats stopping yahoo from encrypting a tiny chunk of their protocol and then crush anyone with the dmca who tries reverse engineering the protocol
Don't come crying to /. just because you can't use someone elses network with paying for it when I can't use your long distance service for free.
You're lucky that the rest of the world isn't so shortsighted. In a world where nobody at all cared whether or not networks were open, these attempts to entrap IM users would be penny-ante stuff - the real crooks would be purchasing the street in front of your house and charging you ten bucks every time you needed to go to work or buy groceries.
Ask yourself: "Am I 'stealing' from Microsoft or AOL when I send an email that goes through their servers? If not, why is IM any different, and are these differences unavoidable engineering constraints or deliberate decisions by companies hoping to trap users into their proprietary network?"
Well, there's a question... What if I went and bought some colo space with a nice fat connection and setup a Jabber server and then set it up so everybody who wanted to use it would just have to pay a dollar a month. All the money I collected would then go to pay the bill.
;-)
I'd make zero profit. As more people on the system, and generated more money, I'd use that money to put into better hardware.
Would people pay 12 dollars a year for hassle free IM? Or is everybody just gonna stick with AOL
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.