Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have agreed to make their two instant-messaging programs work together, a partnership that could threaten market leader America Online, people familiar with the situation said.
The deal was expected to be announced early Wednesday, these people told The Associated Press. One of them works closely with Microsoft. The other was briefed on the deal. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details.
A Yahoo-Microsoft partnership, allowing users of the competing services to exchange messages seamlessly, would give the two companies nearly as many users combined as AOL has in total.
AOL’s instant-messaging product, AIM, had some 51.5 million unique U.S. users in September, compared to about 27.3 million for the competing MSN Messenger and 21.9 million for Yahoo’s Messenger, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
News source: MSNBC
The deal was expected to be announced early Wednesday, these people told The Associated Press. One of them works closely with Microsoft. The other was briefed on the deal. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details.
A Yahoo-Microsoft partnership, allowing users of the competing services to exchange messages seamlessly, would give the two companies nearly as many users combined as AOL has in total.
AOL’s instant-messaging product, AIM, had some 51.5 million unique U.S. users in September, compared to about 27.3 million for the competing MSN Messenger and 21.9 million for Yahoo’s Messenger, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
News source: MSNBC
Version 3.51
Bugs fixed:
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- Previous version did not delete some of temporary files;
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It's a good idea. I really like the way MSN is doing web cam and I wanted that in yahoo messenger. Now, let's wait and see the results.
What an achievement... right up there with splitting the atom.
After MS gains control over all the other messengers it will
Be the defacto state controlled by MS
After MS gains control over all the other messengers it will
Be the defacto state controlled by MS
I don't think that will be the case. MS really missed the boat with IM, considering Windows comes with Messenger built in they should have dominated the market but I suspect they didn't see the importance of it until it was too late.
Merging is a very smart move but my money is on Googles IM which is just like all the other Google services, clean and easy to use. The way it is being tied into its other services is a major plus too.
If you think that Microsoft missed the boat, then you would have to agree that currently Google is even further behind!
Their product has just recently launched, and is little more than a plain-vanilla implementation of an open IM protocol. People into searches might like a simple to-the-point experience, but IM customers like the bells and whistles.
At this point, it is an interesting race to gain market.
I agree, Google is nowhere with its client right now but its not really been a problem for Google to come from nowhere with their services. Googles news, email, desktop search and stuff they've aquired has all done extremely well. The idea of having Googles IM tied into your Gmail and who knows what other services further down the road seems to me to be a much better approach than to just keep on racking on fluff to the core of the program to keep users interested.
As for people wanting bells and whistles from IM, I'm not sure that is true at all. I don't agree at all that tools have to take on ever more features to stay useful. If something does what I want it to at V1, apart from bug fixes where is the need to continue to upgrade? Newbies like their software as uncluttered and easy to use as possible, seasoned users appreciate less bloat in software, espectially software that is designed to run all the time.
Maybe MSN will finally support offline messages like Yahoo! has done for years.
This is a deceiving number because the same person may have one or more accounts on each network. So while the number of registered screen names increases, the actual user base may not increase nearly as much (although an increase is certain).
I have 6 AIM screennames in a given year. I hate AIM.
My friends have 10+ total. each.
AIM/MSN/YAHOO take on Google
Slightly OT, has anyone seen the new AIM Triton (SP?). It's much better than before still needs a little less traffic on its interface. I see they got the radio feature out before MSN Messenger. I hope Messenger 8 will be able to support both MSN Radio and MSN Video. That'd be groovy. I made a ghetto looking mock up of Messenger 8 based on other's mock ups I'd like to share. I'll post them in the forums later.
As for the following:
AOL’s instant-messaging product, AIM, had some 51.5 million unique U.S. users in September, compared to about 27.3 million for the competing MSN Messenger and 21.9 million for Yahoo’s Messenger, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
I'm wondering where those 21.9 million US yahoo messenger users are. I know ONE person in the US that uses it. If it's non-us, then I'd understand it because Yahoo is way more popular in east asia.
if msnM and Yahoo team up its going to bloat the hell out of the messenger. EG: when you click search you will want to search say either msn search but then oh woops you are searching yahoo
this is just like asking big famous stars to star in a new movie so that it would get high ratings, its very poor way of seeking attention, i say microsoft stay with themselfs and do not team up with yahoo.
as i said, MsnM are perfectly fine.
that is why
I think you are missing the point here.
Where does it say that they will make some Mahoo Messenger (read it somewhere in the forum
So that being stated, when you search over your MSN Messenger, you will get your results with msn.com, same with Yahoo Messenger which will deliver your search results in yahoo.com.
You will just have the possibility to add and talk with Yahoo contacts, and viceversa.
They arn't merging the two IM protocols or applications into the same app they are just going to make MSN & BTYahoo messenger compatible to each others network/protocols. This has been in the pipeline all this year and is at last properly announced.
This is fairly easy to do (Trillian and Gaim and countless Linux IMs have been doing it for years)
Allowing a 3rd party app to access a closed IM protocol this is all this news is about.
Neither MS or Yahoo would be willing to give up their customer base in IM.
AOL has such a big consumer base due to the fact that AIM is built into the AOL Portal software.
Plus, with this deal, people can actually uses their emoticons, winks, file transfers, video conferencing, voice talks etc seamlessly, and these features can't be replicated by Trillian and GAIM (that goddamn file transfer in GAIM never works).
AOL may have a large userbase in America, but in East and Sout-east Asia (where I lived) where MSN and Yahoo! simply has 90%++ of the userbase, AIM can be considered extinct already with this deal. All is left is Skype (Google Talk is a no contest at all).
In the UK (and maybe even Europe-wide) MSN is much more popular than AOL (i say AOL to mean AIM, ICQ etc). So i only think AOL IM's are big in the US.
All my british or misc overseas friends; MSN
i really have like 8 people on my yahoo compared to around 108 on aim and 70 or so on MSN
Of course some day one of the protocols will eventually take over... It's they way of the world (unfourtnatly).
PS: You don't need an hotmail account to use MSN/Windows messenger (aka :NET Passport account) btw
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