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Yahoo and Microsoft to Merge Instant Messengers
Primotech writes "Betanews has word that Microsoft and Yahoo plan to link their respective IM clients again so that users of both can communicate with each other on one, shared network. Facing threats from third-party applications, like Trillian and Skype, the two tech giants will claim 44% of the instant messaging market, analysts predict. They will also go head to head together with the biggest competitor, AOL."
I hope you're joking, because if not, you must be pretty dumb.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
MS Messenger: Ships standard on all Windows PC's. Pops up every five minutes asking you if you would like to sign up for service. Causes your computer to explode if you try to uninstall it, or indeed just try to get it to shut up. The fact that this still isn't the #1 instant messaging client should tell you something. I have the most luck with voice chat through firewalls on Messenger.
Wrong. Windows Messenger comes standard on Windows XP computers. It is the Corporate edition of the Messenger protocol. Very lean, nice on the eyes, but rarely updated. MSN Messenger is another program, currently at version 7.5 with many more bloated features.
Aim: Comes automatically with AOL, or you can download it free from aol.com. Also comes free with LOTS and LOTS of ads. Ads pop up on your screen. Ads are built into your client. Smart a$$ movie executives send you ads directly. Sex chatbots try to lure you into filthyness before posting the transcript on Fark. Everyone's personal icon is loud, animated, and obnoxious. In short, AIM is a lot like the internet. And like the internet, nearly everyone uses AIM.
Doesn't pop up ads on your screen, only shows ads on the buddy list. These ads used to include movie trailers to those with broadband, but there are hacks to remove it and you can always use a third party product like GAIM. Comparitively, the client for AIM is less capable than the others, but the protocol is very nice, allowing things like underline in the middle of a message unlike MSN Messenger. You can use animated buddy icons, but you are not forced to use an "obnoxious" one, and you can obviously hide them. Only 56% of IM users use AIM. RTFA.
ICQ: Still the greatest communications medium of all time. Really. Greatest ever. (There, I said what you wanted Mr. 3098014563. Now give me my family back, like in the deal.)
ICQ is an abandoned program that used numbers instead of usernames. Bought out by AOL you can now send messages to ICQ users from AIM. I don't know of anyone who uses ICQ, so I don't know how popular this pioneering IM service is.
Yahoo: No really, Yahoo has a chat medium. I was shocked too. Isn't Yahoo just adorable sometimes? On a side note, I've had better luck getting webcams through firewalls over Yahoo. This leads to great situations where I'm videoconferencing with someone over Yahoo, but the audio stream is in MSN and the chat is happening in Jabber.
Is this really worth responding to? Yahoo! uses some strange webcam sharing thing so you can share your webcam with more than one person. Other than that the client is pretty standard, much like AIM as it uses yahoo! email addresses.
Google Chat: Google chat is based on Jabber, the open source next-generation world dominating chat protocol of the fut-- [...]What was that about Google Chat again?
Google Talk is like a stripped down MSN Messenger with voice and very uncustomizable text. It obstensibly uses jabber, but Google hasn't set it up for others to connect server to server, so you need a gmail account.
I wont bother responding to the last two paragraphs where you start going on a tangent about jabber's sex life. +5 Insightful? Hah.