It's Time To Fix Instant Messaging

from the get-to-it dept

The latest Steve Levy column over at Newsweek takes on the same issue we've been talking about for year, saying that it's about time we had an open standard for instant messaging, so the various systems could talk to each other. Despite it being a requirement of the AOL-Time Warner merger, they've pretty much said they're ignoring that part. Their excuses are pretty weak. However, at the same time, the other big players (mainly Yahoo and MSN) don't seem that interested in interoperability themselves. They all seem to think they can dominate the market on their own - and in doing so, are annoying people who are stuck using multiple products (or driving them completely to competitors like Trillian). Levy points out that if the various systems could talk to each other, it could actually benefit all those companies more by creating a bigger platform for people to develop new and innovative services for - some of which these companies could even make money off of.

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