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Yahoo Shutting Out Third-Party IM Clients?

Posted by simoniker on from the sound-of-strangled-yodeling dept.

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."

4 of 442 comments (clear)

  1. Why is it by Absurd+Being · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  2. Re:Yeah, that sucks but... by jgisclon · · Score: 5, Interesting
    where is the economic incentive to provide an IM service that everybody in the world can use? Servers do cost money...

    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.

  3. Re:Annoying for the Consumer by spektr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Yeah, that sucks but... by rmohr02 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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?
    Don't.

    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.