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AOL-Yahoo-MSN Messaging Unified... in the Workplace Only

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the gaim-is-cheaper dept.

bakreule writes "Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! are teaming up to link their separate instant messaging services for use in the workplace, 'the first major step by the industry leaders to enable computer users to communicate with one another no matter which of the three systems they use.' Sound to good to be true? It is. 'What this does not do,' Root said (yes, that's his name), 'is the holy grail of instant messaging, which is to allow anybody on any network to send a message to anybody on any other network.' It seems that the system, which is aimed for corporations, involves some MS software which acts as an intermediary between the different systems. Sounds like a fancy version of all the open source IM clients out there."

2 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. uh oh... by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 4, Informative

    "This lays the groundwork for instant messaging to become as widespread and useful as e-mail is today," said Taylor Collyer

    If it becomes as "widespread and useful as e-mail" then that means I'm going to have spam popping up on my screen every three seconds. Goodbye, Instant Messaging.

    In any case, this is all nonsense. AOL, Yahoo, and The Beast should all just implement the server-to-server protocol used by Jabber. It's on the IETF standards track and will eventually be used by everyone who isn't one of those three.

    Actually, if one of the big three (probably the smallest of the big three, whichever that is) implemented the protocol, the other two would pretty much have to.

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    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
  2. Jabber already does this and is an open protocol by josevnz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hello to all,

    This is welcomed news, but the people at Jabber (http://www.jabber.com) did something like this first. Using a Jabber client you can talk to the three other networks by using an special plugin installed on the server (http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/).

    Also Jabber is a very extensible platform that can be used almost for anything (like System monitoring, for example):

    http://www.jabber.org/about/overview.php?PHPSESS ID =2517926c4f71caed9f6bff1af6843dbd

    Also as the original poster mentions, Gaim already does this without problems (even when Yahoo decides to change their protocol, which is almost every 6 months :)).

    Regards,

    --
    Jose Vicente Nunez Zuleta RHCE, SJCD, SJCP