"Yahoo! Inc and Microsoft Corp today will begin limited public beta testing of interoperability between their instant messaging (IM) services that enable users of Windows Live Messenger, the next generation of MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger with Voice to connect with each other. This interoperability -- the first of its kind between two distinct, global consumer IM providers -- will form the world's largest consumer IM community, approaching 350 million accounts," says Microsoft.
The new beta program will be available in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada (English and French), China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States (English and Spanish).
Comment: Yahoo and Microsoft have been working on this for several years, and announced plans to connect their consumer systems last year. (Microsoft's business system, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, already interoperates with Yahoo and AOL.) The real problem is interoperating with the consumer services offered by the market leader, AOL, which owns both AIM and ICQ. Both Microsft and Yahoo have been trying to interoperate with AOL since at least 1999, when AOL started tweaking its AIM protocols to shut them out.
Interoperability of IM via open standards would be a much better idea, but seems no closer now than when I wrote Chat to the future in 2002.
