On Wednesday, Microsoft and Yahoo announced their partnership to develop interoperability between their popular Microsoft Messenger and Yahoo Messenger by the second quarter of 2006.
Whilst America Online (AOL), pioneered and dominates the instant-messaging market, its user base is largely confined to within the USA. It is hoped that once interoperability is achieved between Microsoft Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, the combined user base will be larger than that of TIme Warner Inc.’s AOL outside the USA.
“If you leave the boundaries of the US, it’s MSN and Yahoo. … You don’t find a whole lot of AOL,” said Blake Irving, corporate vice president of MSN.
Yahoo and Microsoft estimate they will have a high percentage of the 275 million people who use IM services worldwide.
Other IM’s that are available currently include:
- Skype
- Google Talk (*doesn’t currently have Mac OS X version, see Diagram 1.0)
- ICQ
- AOL
- Apple iChat AV (requires either a .Mac, AIM or Google Talk account)
