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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.

17 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Solution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    A client to communicate with them all. And it's free for almost any operating system.

    1. 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)
    2. Re:Solution? by ms1234 · · Score: 5, Funny

      One client in the darkness to bind them. Lets see how fast the worms spread after this.

  2. 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

  3. 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.

    2. Re:Encryption by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting
      How often do you need encryption on your IM conversations?

      Always.

      Personally, I'm rarely bothered about anyone eavesdropping on me asking my sister how she is.

      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?
  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.

    --
    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.

    --
    I'll probably be modded down for this...
  7. Re:So it looks like by bheer · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Can I use Yahoo or MSN messengers through a webpage?

    http://webmessenger.msn.com/. Or Google [Yahoo Web Messenger].

    --
    Go somewhere random
  8. 350 million? by bilbravo · · Score: 5, Funny

    How many of those are bots? ha!

    On a more serious note, I wonder what rules they used to deal with dupes (AFAIK, you can register for MSN with any e-mail... what about yahoo accounts? maybe I'm misinformed)

    --
    Starmen.net
  9. 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?

    --
    Starmen.net
  10. encrypted traffic and homeland security.. by Tominva1045 · · Score: 4, Interesting



    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
  11. dude, Adium by zamyatin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Need an open source, multi-protocol IM client for Mac?

    Adium: http://adiumx.com/

  12. Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps by mjeffers · · Score: 5, Funny

    You know, some of us don't care for all the bells and whistles that make your precious chat clients unstable and buggy. Voice & Video support? That's a sure fire way to leave a memory footprint the size of Alaska on 350 million user's computers. ...and those grapes were sour anyway so I didn't even want them.

  13. How's it work? by dschuetz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.