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Microsoft, Yahoo Finally Merge IM Networks
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.
I wonder what it means for Gaim and Trillian.
Or Google's Jabber client. I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?
AIM is federating with Google Talk. This can mean one of two things.
1. Google is building some sort of stupid AIM functionality into their client.
2. AOL will realize that staying a closed network will cause them to go the way of the dodo, and the best way to keep their users is open up an XMPP (Jabber) gateway. Not a transport mind you, a full-blown gateway that makes it transparent, allowing AOL to use their existing OSCAR protocol in-house while talking to the Jabber network.
If this occurs, and Microsoft stops being so damn obsessed with SIP/SIMPLE (which I bet is how they're communicating with Yahoo), we can finally have interoperable instant messaging.
"Joy is contagious," he said, peering into the microscope.
If they don't encrypt the traffic between users then they will have plausible deniability about participating in e-tapping users for things like homeland security or marketing data mining.
On the other hand, if they encrypt the communications they could be asked to actively provide access to the communications of others- opening them up to lawsuits galore.
Lastly, if the communication between clients were open then logs of them could be processed, useful data harvested, and sold to marketers. But if the data were encrypted then the marketees would have a pretty good idea where their data was compromised.
It's not personal, just business.
Cogito Ergo Sum
I know this is probably asking a lot, but has anyone actually tried these betas and watched the traffic to see what they're doing?
Is it as simple as adding "@yahoo" or "msn:" to your buddy names, and from there all traffic is magically routed at the server side? That is, you'd use a Yahoo protocol with your yahoo client to send a message to the yahoo server, where it'll see that the destination buddy's name starts with "msn:" and so routes it to the MSN server, where it's then sent to yoru buddy?
'cause if it's *that* simple, then it'd be no time at all before this works its way into the other clients.
Always.
Here's the thing: if you pass plaintext traffic 99.9% of the time, it's going to look awfully suspicious when you encrypt that remaining 0.1%. Maybe you're only asking your coworker what kind of beer to buy for that party you're having and don't want the nosy network admin reading about it (or insert other innocent use here), but suddenly your messages stick out like a sore thumb.
Encrypt your traffic whenever possible even if you don't need it. If and when you actually do need it, you'll be glad you did.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I wouldn't call it interconnecting so much as I'd call it a hostile buy-out with intent to kill.
ICQ's popularity was ramping up at such a speed its IM implementation looked like it might overshadow AOL's which was losing customers due to dis-satisfaction with the AIM client environment.
ICQ still exists and was rolled into AIM. However, shortly after the buyout the dev teams were slashed (Mac team eliminated) and updates seem to have slowed to a snails pace. Most ICQ users I interacted with have all used the merger as a prompt to migrate to AIM (AOL's assumed intent)