I’ve talked about this before, but at that point nothing was for certain yet.
Now, Yahoo! has put the announcement up on their website here. Reportedly, they are working to find a way so that users of Yahoo! and MSN messengers will be able to communicate with each other via instant messaging without having to keep both software installed in their systems.
At the same time, other applications that used to be able to connect to the Yahoo! chat network are no longer able to do so. Apparently, the word amongst users is that they’re trying to keep things proprietary. Which is a reasonable thing to do, regarding the costs involved in operating the technology. They obviously don’t want others to leech on their network, unless it is in the form of a partnership such as the one with MSN which is really expected to be launched this June at the latest.
If you ask me, since most people I know are either using MSN or Yahoo! messengers - bridging these two together would be like building a bridge between two continents. Like constructing a digital communications Pangaea. Yes, there are many users still using ICQ, or Skype. That is why I think there should eventually be a unified protocol, such as Jabber (which is used by Google Talk), that will be hosting all messengers. Like the streets are shared by all car makes and models.
