Yahoo! Opens up Their Instant Messenger

prostoalex writes "Reuters is reporting on the new release of Yahoo! Messenger, which will allow third-party applications and plugins to run within the Messenger environment. From the article: 'Initial partners include 30 Boxes, a calendar-sharing site that competes with Google Calendar, commodities trading site Hedgestreet.com and Pando.com, which offers a service for sharing videos or other files via BitTorrent technology. More than 100 mini-programs will be available initially.' The application is currently available in beta. Relatedly, Microsoft is removing the beta warning label from Windows Live Messenger and promises better voice communications, landline calls and future integration with Yahoo! Messenger."

Comments

Yay!

[Vo0k]

Another 5000 zombies for my botnet! Where's the API? Starting to write my "3rd party app" right now!

Re:Yay!

[kjart]

Not that I don't find that comment funny, but I'm curious why AOL adopting a 3rd party addon model is seen as a security hazard (I'd wager a decent chunk of /. feels that way - could be wrong) whereas Firefox is considered a secure browser.

Then again, it is AOL.

Re:Yay!

[Vo0k]

Security vulnerablities = bugs. These are avoided at all cost, and hard to spot. Malicious code is a different cup of tea. Should be much easier to spot and result in immediate reporting of the malicious extension. Even if one in a thousand of users takes a peek at the source, that's enough to prevent malicious pieces of code from executing.

Additionally, a browser uses a "pull" method to get data: User requests data, gets response. May visit a site with malicious extension and the site may try to trick them into installing it, once visited, but no visit - no risk. IM uses "push-pull", with the "push" part more dangerous - the IM is listening and reacts to incoming requests from outside, the malicious code can contact everyone on contact list and send itself to vulnerable clients, no action on side of the user may be required. A browser vulnerablity will infect users visiting given site using vulnerable browser. A IM vulnerablity will infect all on-line users of the IM.

Of course these are just qualitative differences - IM idea is simply more dangerous than browser one, but both can be vulnerable. And there's a matter of user base. Users of AOL are most likely to install a program a friend from their contact list suggests them to install.

Re:Yay!

[chromatic]

It's difficult to imagine a web browser plugin that could harass millions of other web browser users as easily as an instant messenger client plugin could harass millions of other instant messenger users.

Too bad...

[tacarat]

Here's the link to the story that they forgot. A pity, though. They're only opening up the IM for extra, user made, modules. I was hoping they published code for the Yahoo messenger for the community. Hell, I'd be happy if they'd just update the linux version or at least make the current versions more WINE friendly. I'd like my voice chat and video, please.

Re:One thing

[reset_button]

Trillian

System Requirements
Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, ME or XP Home Edition or XP Professional Edition

I missed where it says "or Linux"...

Re:AOL Triton??

[kjart]

Do you actually know someone who wants to use their computer to videochat at the same time they're talking to someone and IMing a third while downloading something?

Yes, I do - young people. Based on your ID, I'd guess you don't fit into that demographic (but I could be wrong).

Re:AOL Triton??

[Davus]

These IM clients have morphed into horribly bloated slow, cranky fragile pieces of junk. Just what we need - an MS lab project that they magically took the 'beta' tag off even though its the same junk as last week - to compete in the same space as all the other junk.
I think it's mostly attributed to the lack of computer literate individuals that these applications are targetted to; They want to bring something old but too complicated to use to them, and pass it off as something fresh.

Re:One thing

[Ilgaz]

They don't even care for OS X version.

That piece of shame isn't updated so it has some OS problems. A caring end user posted a patch to versiontracker and everyone installed it. I mean the people who need it.

Patch: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 29522

Yahoo Messenger (the scandal, check comments there!) http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 14474

Y!M Newest Feature

[demongeek]

Viral infections and data mining tools that work from WITHIN the messenger itself. No more need to open up those nasty attachments, have a plugin that automagically executes files of all times and dials home without you ever needing to think about it....

Re:One thing

[neoform]

They don't even care for OS X version.

Yup, and they don't even care about windows.

Yahoo messenger is extremely bloated (uses 30-50megs of ram), it crashes ALL the time on me (on multiple computers), and last of all, the protocol itself (YMSG) is horribly designed, no logic used whatsoever when they created it.

Re:AOL Triton??

[petabyte]

I know you're right but that does make me feel very old. Teenagers today can video conference, cell phone, IM, myspace, iTunes, etc all at once. Back in my day, *gets out cane*, if you got IE 3.0 and AIM working life was good. My cousin in elementary school has a better laptop and cell phone than I do. I know there are people on this site who fondly remember punchcards, but kids today.

Get off my yard!

*marks himself DEPRECATED and schedules date for port removal*

Re:AOL Triton??

[anaesthetica]

Wow. I think this is the one instance I've ever seen where having a dramatically higher UID actually gave you more cred. Jeez, next thing you know, Macs will be running on Intel chips...

Re:standardize instant messenging

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Do companies make money from their proprietary instant messengers? Is it just ad revenue?

Both. Some companies sell "pro" IM clients and a number get ad revenue from the download page or from ads embedded in the client. The real money, of course, is in dominating the entire space so you can begin charging for access or tying to other features. No one has managed that and hopefully Google will get them to give up on it.

However, when will it be that instant messenging gets a standard protocol (or regains it, i.e. IRC)? When I want to email someone, I know their address and I can email them, I don't have to think about which program they are using to read/write their email. When I want to call someone on the phone, I dial their phone number to reach them anywhere in the world.

Additionally a standard protocols allows an individual or company to run their own server for security and stability reasons. Luckily, such a protocol exists. It is called Jabber and is an approved, open standard. Google has implemented it for their GTalk IM system and Apple has implemented it in their iChat program. I think GAIM supports it as does Trillian (pro only?). The difficulty is, since the existing protocols and social networks are closed, people can't easily migrate away without the ability to interchange. Hopefully, Google will take over enough of the market that other companies will see the value in being able to intercommunicate and we will all get that standard protocol and a defacto standard as well. You can already send messages via the Jabber protocol to anyone who has a Gmail account and the IM client is built into the Webmail interface to it. It works the same as e-mail for addressing, (username@gmail.com or username@somedomain.foo).

Maybe google will have one.

They already do. Also, Jabber is widely deployed in enterprise businesses for secure, internal messaging.