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Microsoft, Yahoo Finally Merge IM Networks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the intarweb-communications-changed-4evr dept.

WinBreak writes "Marketwatch is reporting that, nine months after their announcement, Microsoft and Yahoo! are finally ready to roll out beta IM clients of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger that will be able to talk to each other." The Windows Live Ideas and Yahoo! Messenger pages have more information; the companies say that the resulting user community will be the world's largest, at around 350 million accounts, and that they'll be using SSL to encrypt the traffic between the systems.

8 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Now can we add AIM? by fyonn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think virtually every user wants all the IM networks to interconnect and from 4 big IM networks, we've had two mergers. First AIM and ICQ interconnected and now MSN and yahoo. lets get these two big networks to talk to each other and settle all the messing about!

    dave

  2. Encryption by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow -- encrypting traffic "between the two companies' computers" according to the article. Would it really kill them to encrypt all messages between users?

    1. Re:Encryption by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Overkill? Oh no, my computer is working harder than it should! Look, for 99.9% of conversations, I don't care that there are legal protections keeping the government from tapping my phone without a court order. But I, and everybody else, is still damn glad that protection exists.

  3. Re:Solution? by aymanh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The difference, however, is that you need a separate account for each protocol when using Gaim. This merge means that one Yahoo or MSN account is enough to access both networks.

    Gaim user here by the way, I haven't tried to contact an MSN user through my Yahoo account yet, and I wonder if it is (or will be) possible.

    --
    python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
  4. Re:aMSN in Linux? by MMC+Monster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am implying that Gaim-vv is in the process of being merged into Gaim, but that the merger will not happen until 2.0 is released. The Gaim-vv website says that gaim-vv is dead. I don't think we should be using (unsupported) "dead" software, in case a security issue were to develop.

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    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
  5. Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen by smallpaul · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would be nice to see there be some official standards of a chat protocol.

    There is: http://www.jabber.org/

    The thing that is in the way of us achieving of truly open chat is the fact that the account providers think they "own" the users -- which is why they are possesive about them.

    Yes, that is the problem. It has nothing to do with technology or standards availability.

  6. Translation to American English by MarkByers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't care that there are legal protections keeping the government from tapping my phone without a court order.

    Americanized:

    I don't care that there used to be legal protections keeping the government from tapping my phone without a court order.

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    I'll probably be modded down for this...
  7. Re:annnnndddddd GAIM by bilbravo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes... everyone knows about GAIM. However, you cannot talk to an MSN user from a Yahoo! account. That's what this merger means. Nobody is saying GAIM (or Trillian, or others) didn't allow you to connect to multiple networks simultaneously before this announcement.

    This is like the 6th post I've seen saying "What about GAIM?". What about it?

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    Starmen.net