Yahoo Shutting Out Third-Party IM Clients?

Posted by simoniker on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @01:11PM 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."

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Re:Yeah, that sucks but... by jgisclon · 2003-09-17 13:21 · 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.