Yahoo Messenger Blocks Outside IM Clients

jj00 writes "CNET News is reporting that Yahoo has started blocking 3rd party Messenger clients from their service. The article is about Trillian, but I have noticed that my gaim client hasn't been working for the past few days." As reported earlier.

Comments

nah

[Anonymous Coward]

More like "great way to stop giving the service away for free to freeloaders who generate no ad revenue" am i rite?

Re:nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I do. They sure give me strange looks though.

Re:nah

[Xuli]

Was Yahoo not one of the founding members of the IMUnified group, whose sole purpose was to unify with goliaths such as MSFT to fight the tyranny of AOL? Aforementioned tyranny being comprised of AOL blocking outise clients from accessing their users.

What goes around comes around. Out of protest I am planning to use my AOL IM exclusively indefinitely unitil this is solved.

Starting with a work-related mandate to use Yahoo's IM service, I've since become quite a "Sticky" Yahoo visitor. My calendar is linked with their service, I forward a number of mail addresses there - I generate them money!

How, you ask? I am given, at the least (counting calendar, email, and news) three opportunities per visit to interact with Yahoo's advertisers and sponsors. This is a direct result of being a Yahoo IM user, and discovering how their other services integrated with their messaging client. While I cannot comment on MSN, and I don't dream of endorsing AOL for myriad reasons, I feel that Yahoo's services were robust enough to keep a technically demanding user such as myself attracted to the brand. In interacting with memebers of Yahoo's chat community, it seems to be the case that moderate to heavy users of it's chat/IM service also quickly adopt other Yahoo services. This equates to more unique pageviews per day from IM/chat users than off-the-street users and perusers. Yahoo IM users, on average, tend to be loyal out of necessity - not necessity becasue they are in any way indentured to format, design or interoperability to Yahoo, but becasue things "just work."

This move, to isolate IM users who may be using a different client (is it even reasonable to assume users will be happy with just one?) services is tragic. Yahoo has clearly missed the point that IM users are not IM users alone, but rather comprise some of the best audiences for exposure to their ads, and therefore, a direct path to revenues.

This move, to block users who've already made a conscious choice to use other Yahoo services is a faux pas, to say the least.

Re:nah

[Peyna]

If you read the news.com article cited further up you'll realize that Yahoo states they have every intent with working with 3rd-party clients, and that they fully support a standards initiative.

They're basically just saying "Hey, we're putting this upgrade out there, and it's probably gonna break your client. You might want to talk to us and we'll tell you how to fix it."

Re:nah

[darien]

So, there's 50 users that Yahoo! lost, how many more times will this scenario be duplicated across the planet?

Yes, but if these people are using Trillian, they weren't the sort of users Yahoo! wants anyway. They were using the service, but not generating any revenue to pay for it (principally by not looking at ads). Of course, Trillian users boosted Y!'s market share, and their presence made it a more attractive choice to new users, some of whom would use the official client, see the ads and generate revenue. But Y! seems to have concluded that letting Trillian users use their network for free doesn't attract enough new users of the official client to be cost-effective; so why would they encourage it?

I think Y! know exactly what they're doing. Depending on your long-term strategy, it can be better to have forty thousand customers making you a tiny profit than forty million who cost you money.

Windows Messenger has update also

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Microsloths IM as well and it required me to download an update when I logged on tonight, and it wouldn't let me on without updating... and it probably sent back the illegal CD key I use for my copy of XP. OOPS did I say that!?

Re:Windows Messenger has update also

[NickFortune]

Yep - that's why I put a lock on my front door- to help prevent crime. A lot of people say that I'm just worried about my stuff being ripped off, but that's not true! I am passionately committed to whole crime prevetion thing.

Trouble is, Microsoft want to be the ones that put the lock on my house. For my protection, obviously. And they'll keep a copy just in case. And so they can let themselves whenever they want to. Just to check my security. And make sure I've not pinched anything. And maybe redecorate if they feel like it.

And if they sometimes take stuff away, well that's ok because it really all belongs to them anyway. All I do is pay for it, it says so on the licence.

And come the advent of Palladium, if I want to get in myself, all I'll have to do is ask them...

Yeah, good job boys. Quality work.

AIM started it

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Windows Messenger came out? It could connect to AIM's network, and had AOL allowed it, it's likely Windows Messenger would've destroyed their marketshare. Afterall, why use AIM to just to talk to one network when you can use Windows Messenger to talk to two? So, AOL cut them off. MS worked around it, AOL cut them off, and so on. Eventually, they reach some sort of agreement, and they don't talk to each other.

Please find a backdoor for Y! and MSN!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, I hope they find a backdoor, because I can't use either my trillian on windows and gaim on linux with yahoo anymore.
I wouldn't mind using the original Yahoo! client, however, I also have ICQ, MSN and AIM accounts that I run at the same time, so having four different big apps running at the same time is just not nice, takes space, cpu, memory and their interfaces are bloated and irrelevant for the thing I want to do: simple IM.
This is why, I have to use Trillian or Gaim: simplicty, small interfaces, easy to have all contacts in the same place.
If Yahoo or anyone else made their client to support all 4 protocols, I wouldn't have a problem using one of them instead of trillian or gaim. But until they do, I really need an integrated solution, not a mess on my desktop!

Their Network

[ultrabot]

Well, it's their network so they can block anyone they want.

If you don't like their rules (I don't), why don't create a free/open/documented IM network? Make it better than the commercial offerings, and people will come.

How's Jabber doing these days, anyway?

Re:Their Network

[AftanGustur]

Make it better than the commercial offerings, and people will come

Welcome stranger, we hope your space travel to our planet has ben a pleasant one.

Unfortunately, on our planet, things are not as simple as on yours. Here on Earth, companies don't hesitade to abuse their market position or enourmous wealth to block normal competition.

It doesn't matter if you create the best mousetrap, as long as Micro$traps controls the market you will get nowhere. You can't even advertise your new trap, since Micro$traps will threaten the magazines to stop advertising in their paper if yours will get printed.

Welcome to earth, we hope you will have a pleasant visit.

Re:Their Network

[ultrabot]

Here on Earth, companies don't hesitade to abuse their market position or enourmous wealth to block normal competition.

So we should just crawl into a hole and die?

IM is not owned by any company yet, let alone MSFT. An Open alternative has a good position to beat the proprietary opposition, especially as it is quite divided already. Open Standards are the "in" thing right now.

Wouldn't it be fabulous if various Corporate platforms (Notes, etc.) chose to use the Jabber protocol as the IM solution? Then everyone would be running Jabber clients already, and communicating with friends would be a natural extension of that activity. I took a look at the Jabber page, inspired by this article, and saw that they are co-operating with IETF to standardize the protocol... and therein lies the future.

Re:Their Network

[slux]

Jabber's doing great. The Jabber software foundation recently issued a press release stating that Jabber has now passed ICQ in popularity.

Also, they're on their way to becoming an actual internet standard.

The last obstacles are file transfer (should be addressed soon) and actually getting people to migrate. When all your friends are on Yahoo for example, it's not that easy to switch. The gateways are supposed to help the problem, but of course right now the Jabber Yahoo gateway is not functioning either.

Re:Their Network

[DrEldarion]

Most people are on those networks because one person initially went on. Then his friends went on because he was on. Then their frends went on because they were on, etc... and now nobody wants to change because all their friends use that network.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:Their Network

[Motherfucking Shit]

It doesn't matter if you create the best mousetrap, as long as Micro$traps controls the market you will get nowhere. You can't even advertise your new trap, since Micro$traps will threaten the magazines to stop advertising in their paper if yours will get printed.

::cough:: bullshit ::cough::

Wired plugged two independent IM apps, Trillian included, giving both of them positive reviews. Doth not Microsoft advertise in Wired? I don't have the print copy of that issue but I'd be seriously surprised if there was not a Microsoft advert in it.

Where does KaZaA advertise? That's right, nowhere; they created a product that people like (as junky as it may be), so people use it, and tell their friends. When was the last time you were browsing a trade magazine and saw a full-page color ad for Apache? That's what I thought. Yet Apache is everywhere, even on Windows, even with numerous competitors.

Open source/free/alternative software doesn't need to advertise. When it's good, its user base will take care of promotion and evangelizing.

All that said, I don't really see any sort of open source IM initiative taking over. When it comes to IM, the fact is that people want to be on the same network as most or all of their friends. That means a centralized network (or at least a 100% interoperable collection of smaller networks), and that means a lot of bandwidth. Unless IBM, or Sun, or Redhat, or Google decide to pour a few spare millions into operating the infrastructure to power an open IM network, I don't see any "OSS friendly" company ever dominating the IM space.

Lies

[Henry V .009]

This may or may not be a reasonable business decision, but do they really have to flat out lie to their customers?

"If this has affected the way in which third parties interact with our service, it is merely a byproduct of our efforts to implement preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.

Who the hell decided that it was okay to to treat all your customers like I treat my retarded cousin Larry? I hope that they understand that a lot of us know and resent it when we are being lied to.

Re:Lies

[yRabbit]

Many "potential spammers" can, of course, just use their official clients. They could, if they wanted, take the time to send identical messages to people one at a time.

If they're only concerned about spammers, and third-party clients allow you to spam, they just need to implement some anti-spam measures on the server side of things (read: Block users from sending too many messages out in some intelligent manner or another), not block out many people who'd like to talk to others on their network but use a client they might trust or like more.
It sounds to me like they must not care about third party clients.. Why not simply tell the truth in their statement?

Re:Lies

[Concerned Onlooker]

"If this has affected the way in which third parties interact with our service, it is merely a byproduct of our efforts to implement preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.

Well, irregardless she shouldn't have used the word "preventative." Don't misunderestimate me, I'm sure it gives the sentence an impactful feeling but it seemed unnecessary.

Re:Lies

[Awptimus Prime]

Apparently you don't use the Yahoo! IM service. It's to the point I keep the client on a hidden virtual desktop since I don't like my boss walking by and seeing an IM from S3XXEEmama69 inviting me to view her webcam for $3.99/minute.

Spam and abuse on Yahoo! chat has been out of control for years. Plus, it's not like any corporate entity can tell the full truth about anything these days. Instead of a few people going "OH HEEEEY! What about them ads you want me to see??", they simply address the most beneficial points to the public. That's because the masses can be a whiney, time consuming waste of time and resource if you give them too much information.

Personally, I'd rather see Yahoo! make revenue off their small ads and keep their email and IM services free.

As I read this thread, I find no end to my disappointment in people's attitude towards a free service trying to get back a little of what they've given you. I think this model should be praised for even existing. Think about it. Don't you remember the days before you broadband connections? You know, back when people silently got nickeled and dimed to death over any little perk or service for analog phone service (think $5.95/mo for CallerID!). Now you get the world at your finger tips, for free, but yet whine endlessly when they would like to show you and advertisement in an attempt to run their business.

If half the people on this website got outside on occasion, they'd find there's a lot more to get upset about in the marketing industry than small non-popping up ads in an IM.

Chew on these:

- Gas stations that you can't even see in the windows because they are completely covered with beer, cigarette, and drink ads.

- Billboards with ~1100 watts worth of lights blanket our cities and dot our countryside.

- 6-10 minutes of TV commercials every 30 minutes. The same obnoxious commercials every break.

- MTV

- Spam

- Advertising in public school campuses.

- Companies scheming to put billboards in space.

It's not like the people complaining are even being forced into using a service at all. Everyone can go back to IRC and deal with the service level of a free realtime chat network. You know, smurfers, script kiddies, etc.

I got nothing, so I'll be quiet now. ;-)

They're cutting their own throats

[vaylen]

Most people have been using Trillian for so long that they will simply ask their friends to use ICQ or MSN so they can stay on their contact lists. In the end this will just result in fewer people using Yahoo messenger.

In a related story, NBC has decided to make their broadcast signal only work on a G.E. television. Brilliant move boys!

The lesson to be learned here

[lateralus]

Never trust a corporation with anything you value or at least with proper constraints over that corporation.

If you want to feel safe that you can use your service tomorrow too then run jabber or any other service that you can run a server for if your main server stops.

Serves people right for trusting closed systems.

Beta Patch already released

[M3wThr33]

Cerulean Studios already fought AOL and won.
If you hoof it on over to Trillian's website and logging into the member's section, you can get the beta Yahoo-patch.

How's that for response time?

Re:Beta Patch already released

[CGP314]

Gaim is already working on a crack too.

Re:Beta Patch already released

[NuShrike]

I confirm this. Beta patch for post 2.0pro release works fine with "new" Yahoo.

Trillian beta still works

[koreth]

If you're a paying Trillian customer, you can download the beta of their next major release, which works just fine with the Yahoo! Messenger network even after this change. I believe they've said they'll port the protocol change back to the free version as well. I'm running the beta and haven't noticed any disruption of service.

I don't think it's meant as a block.

[typobox43]

I've been watching this situation as it developed... I'm a very.. avid Trillian user. I highly doubt that the sole purpose of this was to block alternative clients. Why would they give a two weeks' warning, when the Trillian developers especially are known for releasing connectivity patches right when the problem occurs? (Remember back when AIM blocked Trillian... February 2002? There were five patched versions of Trillian released within a three-week period. That seems to say that there's not much chance in keeping alternative clients out by simply changing the protocol. I consider the MSN deal a completely different one from the Yahoo issue. MSN has publicly announced that there will be licensing for their protocol - which is great by me. That ensurance that I'm using completely legal software is always a plus. Yahoo, on the other hand, is a different story. They've not really made much comment about alternative IM aside from the "byproduct" comment. They seem to really be avoiding the issue. My theory here is that they decided it was time to upgrade everything... maybe spammers were the driving force, maybe not. Then, someone noticed that it was causing these alternative clients to have fits. Was it a byproduct of their changes? Yes. Was it unwanted? No. I think this was simply a case of "accidental genius."

Re:why is this even an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone who uses a proprietary network to do communication on is taking some pretty big chances...

You mean like the the telephone system?

Re:GAIM, jabber too?

[kruntiform]

Of course Jabber is not affected. Why would it be? That is the beauty of Jabber and a good reason why everyone should be using it instead of closed IM protocols. (Good luck convincing anyone though!) If you have a Yahoo account which you log-in to from Gaim, though, you might want to clear the auto-login checkbox for that account for the time being as it won't work and it will just give an error. The Gaim people are working on a fix -- you can read the announcement on their web site. I imagine that any Yahoo gateways on Jabber servers would be broken too.

Re:ohh yeh...

[Eric Ass Raymond]

Maybe they want to stop freeloaders who do not contribute to the ad-revenues?

Why the hell do you expect that everything should be free?

Trillian wasn't merely blocked -

[nuckfuts]

it caused the program to crash. In many cases Trillian could not even start until automatic login to Yahoo! was edited out of an ini file.

Ad Revenue?

[tarnin]

What ads? I use Yim at work and there are zero ads. The only ad that there is is a pop up screen when it starts that can be turned off in the options. No ads on the client itself like aim either. No hacking needed (eg. I'm not running DeadYim).

All this is is an update to their protocal that happened to break third party messengers. I looked for a license that you could purchace ala msn and couldnt find one. I believe that they will continue to allow third party messengers into their network.

Why is it just because they upgrade something and it breaks other programs that they didn't code people call out the wolves on them? Not all companies are M$ here. On the other side, not all companies are Opensource based and fully backwards compaible. In this case, Yahoo upgraded their core protocal and in doing that broke all backwards comptability. This, in my eyes, isn't some evil plot to get people to look at ads or get license money, it's just the way they do things.

Which article did you read?

[artemis67]

Coinciding with the upgrade, Yahoo said it would likely disable access to outside IM services such as Trillian. Yahoo set a deadline of Wednesday for its forced upgrade and its intention to disconnect Trillian.

This is most definitely an attempt on Yahoo's part to block third-party IM clients.

Nowhere in the article does it state that Yahoo still supports a standards initiative, or that it has any intent to work with third parties.

Gaim from CVS works just fine

[Eye of the Frog]

I grabbed the latest Gaim files from CVS after the 24th, and I was back up and running with no problem at all. Thank you to all the Gaim developers for their hard work!