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Will Instant Messaging Ever Unite? 437

Posted by Hemos from the probably-not dept.
scallion writes "An article in Technology Review titled Getting AOL To Talk To MSN points out that currently the world of instant messaging is "as factionalized as Afghanistan," then asks, what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?"
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Will Instant Messaging Ever Unite? More

Will Instant Messaging Ever Unite?

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  • and the answer is... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jaclu ( 66513 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:03AM (#3841950)
    what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?

    jabber.org
    • You beat me to it. Yes jabber is *the* future. And since it can do SSL and the server can be kept internal I can even fit it in under my security policy whereas other IM systems would be a big old no go. :)
      • Jabber alone is NOT the answer. You need interoperability with existing protocols. What could does it do me to sit on Jabber and talk to myself when I can't communicate with my buddies on AIM (since aim-t was still broken last I checked due to IP blocks by AOL)? And they won't switch for the same reason. It's a Catch-22.

        • Re:and the answer is... (Score:3, Informative)

          by tzanger ( 1575 )

          What could does it do me to sit on Jabber and talk to myself when I can't communicate with my buddies on AIM (since aim-t was still broken last I checked due to IP blocks by AOL)?

          Do what I did; set up your own Jabber server. aim-t and whatnot gets blocked because there are too many people on it and it becomes a target. Setting up a Jabber server isn't all that difficult and takes up next to zero bandwidth. Find a buddy, use a work computer (sell them on the idea of using Jabber for IM)... It's fun, and it works. I run Jabber with aim-t, msn-t and icqv7-t.

    • what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?

      The best solution, has, unfortunately, been destroyed.

      One Ring to rule them all,
      One Ring to find them,
      One Ring to bring them all
      and in the darkness bind them

    • If AOL can't even make ICQ and AIM interchangeable, this will never happen. ICQ is superior in all ways to AIM (it can handle offline messaging, it uses numbers for accounts instead of screen names so you don't have people called Some_Guy__456574, etc). AOL bought ICQ many years ago and has not yet been able to make them interoperate.

    • Jabber? Try SIMPLE. (Score:5, Informative)

      by chefmonkey ( 140671 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @11:23AM (#3842660)
      Jabber, unfortunately, has a number of weaknesses. It was not designed for security (for example, it sends passwords as clear text), and the model it uses is inherently vulnerable to DOS attacks. And you'll never convince AOL to use it.

      On the other hand, SIMPLE [ietf.org] is every bit as interoperable as Jabber, with the added weight of the fact that AOL has agreed to interoperate with other vendors using SIMPLE once it is complete.

      • You've been living under a rock. Jabber has supported SSL for a very long time, as well as MD5 authentication.

        As far as SIMPLE goes, well, Jabber actually exists. That's a plus, isn't it?
        • As far as SIMPLE goes, well, Jabber actually exists. That's a plus, isn't it?

          SIMPLE exists in a firm enough form that it's shipping in the MSN Messenger that comes with Windows XP (and can be downloaded for other MS platforms), and has received the explicit backing of both Microsoft and AOL [nwfusion.com].

          So, let's review -- a SIMPLE client is already installed on every XP system in the world, and AIM will soon provide interoperability using SIMPLE.

          Those are plusses, aren't they?

      • Re:Jabber? Try SIMPLE. (Score:5, Informative)

        by infiniti99 ( 219973 ) <justin@affinix.com> on Monday July 08, 2002 @12:36PM (#3843226) Homepage
        It was not designed for security (for example, it sends passwords as clear text)

        What?!?! Jabber sends the password as a hash and even has SSL support. Some clients do PGP end-to-end if you really that. Not to mention that the server-to-server protocol does "dialback" to prevent spoofing. Sorry, but you are terribly misinformed here. Jabber is the most secure of all IM systems (which unfortunately doesn't say much, since security is basically non-existent in ICQ, AIM, etc).

        the model it uses is inherently vulnerable to DOS attacks

        I'm not a server developer, so I'd like to hear about these DoS attack vulnerabilities (that aren't inherent to servers in general). Otherwise, I'll write this comment off as unfounded.

        you'll never convince AOL to use it.

        I'll give you this, at least. Fortunately, as an open project, Jabber will live on no matter what any company says or does. Unfortunately, without serious corporate backing, Jabber is likely to stay within the techie circle (like Linux).

        According to Peter Saint-Andre (member of the Jabber Software Foundation, who was at this year's IETF meeting), SIMPLE is about two years away from defining the protocols, let alone implementations, for a full-featured IM system. Jabber only recently had an RFC written (earlier this year), as the focus before that has been on implementations. The difference is obvious: people are using Jabber right now, while SIMPLE is basically all talk.
        • According to Peter Saint-Andre (member of the Jabber Software Foundation, who was at this year's IETF meeting), SIMPLE is about two years away from defining the protocols, let alone implementations, for a full-featured IM system. Jabber only recently had an RFC written (earlier this year), as the focus before that has been on implementations. The difference is obvious: people are using Jabber right now, while SIMPLE is basically all talk.
          Okay, in this respect, I'm afraid you (and Peter) are sorely misinformed. Jabber has had its first internet-draft written about it (first internet-draft to RFC usually takes about three years), while SIMPLE is rapidly approaching RFC status (I'd be surprised if it is not published as a full-fledged RFC by year's end). It's stable enough that the most recent versions of Microsoft Messenger have included SIMPLE support.

          While you don't seem to personally care about widespread support, the endorsement of an open standard (which SIMPLE is) by such IM giants as AOL and Microsoft [go.com] certainly seems to give it a certain amount of credibility.

          SIMPLE has a client on every Windows XP box in the world, and will soon be joined by every AIM client in the world. What's Jabber's total penetration?

    • ICANN (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gerf ( 532474 )

      why don't we just let them decide everything for us. then everyone will be happy happy happy.

      seriously, unless the big 3 or 4 or whatever have incentive do unite their IM's, there will be none

      but, if you unite, there is a security issue. of all people, the readers of /. should know this. it's one reason why M$ gets targeted by virii... they're the baby seals with big eyes just looking for a beating. this is what would happen with such a unified system. but, if it were open-source... (*gasp* says the big companies! heresy!)

      besides security, the issue of servers comes into play. who will host this crap for cheap? will people pay 2 bucks a month for IM? i doubt it, knowing those who only have something like 5 - 10 people on their list. will there be advertisements like there is now? will there be run-arounds like ther is now? it'd be nice if everyone just got along, but what's the chances of that happening, huh?

    • Run your own chat service built on accepted and open protocalls, hopefully with free software. Use, IP6, Xchat, or similar, kick the stupid propriatory habit and invite your friends to play. There's no concievable way to deny service to everyone everywhere. Of course the sensible thing won't happen if comercial interests continue to turn the web into another form of TV with 80% of all traffic heading to 4 websites. Everyone assert yourself, please.

  • It'll never happen with the big guys (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Vader82 ( 234990 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:04AM (#3841959) Homepage
    The problem is that AOL made instant messaging as we know it today. They feel they are the "inventors" and hence shouldn't have to let anyone else in on their network. If they had opened things up from the get go, they would now be the absolute standard for instant messaging instead of the de facto one for 90%+ of the people I know. Their stubbornness is what caused it.
    • Actually, for a long time, ICQ was the only instant messaging platform. AOL bought Mirabilis, the creators of ICQ, shortly after the development of AIM.
      • Not true. AOL had IMs way before they had AIM. But at that time, the only way to IM would be to have AOL. AIM just lets you get to the IM feature of aol without having aol.
    • If they had opened things up from the get go, they would now be the absolute standard for instant messaging instead of the de facto one for 90%+ of the people I know. Their stubbornness is what caused it.

      Their stubbornness made them the market leader, which I assume was their goal.

      Opening the protocol up would have been good for the users, but not for their business plan.

    • One of the main reasons that AOL doesn't want to play nice can be seen at the top of the AIM window.

      A nice little ad.

      If they allowed others to connect, they'd lose a significant ammount of ad revenue to those with nicer instant message products (not that AOL delivers anything but the FINEST products to their users).
    • It wouldn't be *as* bad if AIM didn't suck so bad. The client is absolutely horrific! Everything but the kitchen sink is in it (and I think the sink is going to be in the next release). Rate your buddy, buddy icons, e-mail checker, stock ticker...

      And then they don't add useful features like aliases for your buddies (so you can see FrogDog24 as "John Smith"), secure IM, etc.

      Perhaps its better this way, though. If AIM were improving, there would be less of a base for revolt.

      • Re:It could be better (Score:3, Informative)

        by kisrael ( 134664 )
        I disagree....AIM is *the* best interface I've seen for Instant Messenging. Yes, out of the box it's a bit "excessively synergized" with a special home page, stock tickers, headlines, etc, but they have done an excellent job of making all that stuff easily "turn-offable" in the configuration. When they released a new version that probably made some behaviors easier for newbies (i.e. how minimizing, closing the window, and signing off/on are all linked) they made it easy to restore the old behavior that people may have gotten used to. The interface is feature rich (in terms of buddy icons, fonts, colors, the frickin smiley thing, blah blah etc) but the complexity is well hidden.

        Compared to the old interface for ICQ, it's heavenly. I think they've really done their usability homework (my only gripe is that if I've cut and pasted some text from another someone else's talk, it copies the color and formatting, and the only way to get back to my default text is to cut and paste some of my own text...) Admittedly, I've only played with AIM, ICQ, Trillian, and Exodus, but AIM is the cleanest interface I've seen.
    • They feel they are the "inventors" and hence shouldn't have to let anyone else in on their network.
      Get real. It's their network and their bandwidth. You same hypocrites complain about spammers using your network and taking your bandwidth yet you feel as if some perceived right is being violated when you can't use AOL's AIM servers for your own purpose.

      It's their network and their program, so they set the rules. If you don't like it, you can use one of the other instant messenger programs. If you really don't like it, then there's nothing stopping you from creating a server that uses the AIM protocol and hosting that on your server sucking up your bandwidth. Maybe, if you are creative enough, you'll make a better IM protocol. That's what the Jabber [jabber.org] people did.

  • it's called TRILLIAN! (Score:4, Informative)

    by T.Monk ( 585143 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:04AM (#3841961)
    Trillian rocks... combines 3 or 4 different IM into a single, skinnable interface, and even manages to keep up with AOL's shennanigans...

    • Re:it's called TRILLIAN! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by scrm ( 185355 )
      OK, but for end-users to have an IM client that supports multiple networks only solves the problem at one end of the chain.

      "Imagine," says Sonu Aggarwal, CEO of Cordant, a Bellvue, WA maker of IM gateway software, "having a contact in your IM buddy list that represents your Delta flight reservation. Rather than having to call an 800-number and digging up your reservation code, that 'buddy' is your ticket, constantly communicating the status of the reservation."

      For IM to become a real killer app in the way described above (i.e. for the medium to be taken seriously for commercial use), some consolidation and an official standard would be needed.

    • Re:it's called TRILLIAN! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:18AM (#3842164) Homepage
      Trillian is only a temporary answer. Jabber could've been a better piece of the answer, but it got de-railed as far as IM interoperability. We truly need interoperable protocols. Or better yet, a standard protocol.

      The road block to such a protocol, however, is AIM, and possibly the other IM providers. How do you get people to switch from one established, large IM provider such as AOL to a new protocol/provider? If you don't have interoperability (which AOL has demonstrate its resistance to in the past), you won't get people to switch.
    • I agree totally. Unified Instant Messaging will never be a reality, and it never needs to be. Everyone (read: typical user) already has three or four different handles on all the systems and the only thing we need is a really high quality, cross platform application that can service the big 4: ICQ, AIM, MSN, and Yahoo.

      Bonus points if all the vendors could agree to support the unified application, while still offering their branded versions for their own networks. I think this last option is much closer to reality and is actually achievable, as opposed to unifying the underlying protocols.

    • Re:it's called TRILLIAN! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      T.Monk wrote:Trillian rocks...

      Lessee... M$-Win only. Closed source. Doesn't support Jabber (last I looked). Major bloat (I'm told). Constant fund-raising (last I looked in on 'em).

      I guess we have different ideas of what features result in something "rocking" ;).

  • Just use a client that supports multiple protocols. Under Windows you can use Trillian [ceruleanstudios.com]. It supports MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, and IRC seamlessly. When you've got all that in one nice client where everything looks similar, why do you need a single protocol?

    • Re:Who needs a united protocol? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by infiniti99 ( 219973 ) <justin@affinix.com> on Monday July 08, 2002 @11:59AM (#3842945) Homepage
      Why do we need a standard IM protocol? The same reason we needed a standard email protocol. Interoperable email was solved by having each of the big boys (like Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL) to agree on a standard. The answer was _not_ to use some all-in-one Prodigy+Compuserver+AOL mail application.

      There are other problems with the Trillian approach. First, it is a "single-vendor-solution", which is not what you want with something as important as IM. Imagine if the only email client you could ever use was Outlook. What do you do about Linux? What about PDAs? Wait for Cerulean to develop clients for every situation? Not. The whole point of an open protocol is to allow anyone to develop a interoperable server or client.

      Second, AOL (and Yahoo also, based on rumors) are not happy with these 3rd-party interoperability attempts. What happens when AOL decides to detect Trillian, and not allow it to use their network? Please, we don't need this kind of childish BS in instant messaging, especially as it becomes more prevalent in the corporate world.

      My personal jabber server keeps on ticking no matter what AOL does. This is how IM should have been since the beginning.

      IM interoperability is a serious problem. I'll agree with you that Trillian solves the problem, however in my opinion it is in a temporary way. The real solution is to standardize on a protocol. Here's to hoping Jabber takes over the world :)

  • AOL vs. Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PHAEDRU5 ( 213667 ) <instascreed.gmail@com> on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:07AM (#3842010) Homepage
    Hmmm. It's hard to know who to cheer for on this one.

    My choice would be Trillian [ceruleanstudios.com]

  • what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?
    Lacking an overmind to do the uniting for you, you may want to try Trillian [trillian.cc].
  • If you're considering AOL/MSN/ICQ/Yahoo then it's very doubtful.

    Unless I'm mistaken AOL have the market pretty much sown up in terms of users. By opening up the protocol or moving to something more open, they will probably stand to lose more than they will gain.

    And unless anyone can reliably convince them otherwise (and it would appear that so far they haven't) then it just isn't going to happen.

    (As a side note, I use Trillian [trillian.cc] which combines a number of them including IRC)

  • Don't they realize that as soon as the Micro$oft/AOL/Yahoo merger goes through, that they'll all standardize on a product that will work for everyone except linux/bsd geeks? Shouldn't be long either, not more than a few years... after all, Bush has to finance the 2004 campaign somehow...
  • ...how about Trillian [trillian.cc]? Yeah, I know it's not open-source, and it's for Win32 only (although one of co-workers uses it with the Crossover plug-in [codeweavers.com], and it works fine). It's still an outstanding piece of software, that allows these GlobalHyperMegaCorps to play their games, and still give us the functionality we users crave.
  • Whatever happened to ICQ? They were the biggest at one time. A think a lot of people still use it. It's been probably about 4 years since I've used an IM client so somebody chime in if ICQ has become as crappy as MS or AOL's offerings.

    Personally, I'd like the Google guys to develop one. Just a bare bones here's-a-box-to-type-in-and-a-send-button without the candy land themes and context menus that fill the screen with every emoticon ever created. Just something that does the job instead of trying to be everything to everybody.
    • It's been bought by AOL/Time-Warner. Which resulted in an almost sudden death because AOL like their IM integrated in their junk... hence AIM. Poorly designed software (and they knew it) combined with ICQ's technology.
    • ICQ was bought by AOL some time ago. There was discussion of mergeing the two services, but so far the only thing we've seen in ICQ moving to the AIM protocol. AIM and ICQ have somewhat different userbases however. AIM is primarily used by Americans and the technological neophytes. ICQ has a much more international userbase, and the users tend to be more technologically savvy.

      Personally, I hate the Mirabilis ICQ client (the default install has how many buttons?), but I despise the AIM client (no offline messages and the bing-bong-here's-a-window-right-in-your-face interface. Note to developers: never autopopup windows on me, it's very rude.

      The worst part of all of this is that the one client I really did like, Licq [licq.org] is completely floundering.
  • * Nobody can rival the ease of deployment MS has with Messenger. Now I don't know the competing IM offers, but they'll have to be substantially better than MS Messenger for people to install them.
    * Microsoft doesn't want to share, so it has no commercial interest in interoperability with other IM services
    * Microsoft is almost forcing MS Messenger on you, if you use Outlook 2000/XP. If I don't have MS Messenger running Outlook will start its own instance, but it will not be signed in. In this mode Outlook is noticably slower than if I have MS Messenger started and signed in. Something like a second or so to show a message in the preview pane.

    QED

  • M$ (Score:2)

    by YanceyAI ( 192279 )
    Microsoft is trying.

    I made the mistake of installing Microsoft's messanger the other day. Don't ask me why. Since then: It launches on start up, even though I have repeatedly set it to not do so, and I cannot uninstall it. Basically, I'm going to have to reinstall Windows to get rid of it. It's like an Explorer nightmare all over again.

  • The answer from IETF is a workgroup called SIMPLE. This working group focuses on the application of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP, RFC 2543) to the suite of services collectively known as instant messaging and presence (IMP). The IETF has committed to producing an interoperable standard for these services compatible with the requirements detailed in RFC 2779 and in the Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM) specification, developed within the IMPP working group. As the most common services for which SIP is used share quite a bit in common with IMP, the adaptation of SIP to IMP seems a natural choice given the widespread support for (and relative maturity of) the SIP standard. http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/simple-charter.h tml
  • 3rd party software could be an answer.

    UM will never reach a point of co-operation as it is too much of importance. How can you create a loyal userbase? Not by giving them options to be able to communicate with people who use different IM software. If your friends use MSN or ICQ or other software you most likely choose the one that is the most used within your circle of friends. Especially when the software of a competitor cannot communicate with their clients.

    So, 3rd party software playing translator to the different kind of clients is one of the possible solutions.

  • MS buys AOL and Yahoo.
  • The answer is: not until they want to.

    They could today if they wanted to. Jabber has tried this and got it to work, but AOL and MSN, etc. kept changing their protocol to break Jabber's integration. They even went so far as to make the protocol very dynamic, in order to ease their constant changing of protocols. Very conter-productive if you ask me.

    If they wanted to, they could, but then, that would hinder AOLs big selling point: all your friends are on it. Then the Internet came, and it didn't matter. They hold onto what they can and lie about the rest.

  • Don't forget gaim (Score:2, Informative)

    by danrees ( 557289 )
    Trillian has already been mentioned for win32, but there's also gaim [sourceforge.net] for Linux/GTK - it supports almost every instant messaging protocol under the sun, and doesn't feature the same bloat as the likes of ICQ.

    Gabber [sourceforge.net]'s also pretty good, but since no-one uses the Jabber protocol, it seems pointless to register...
  • Why would competing companies want to share their resources with "the enemy"? What reason could there be for AOL to allow MSN users access to their systems, or vice versa?

    The answer...

    MONEY.

    AOL / MSN / etc just need to come up with a cross-IM network advertising system, and things will rapidly fall into place. It might be a bit much to assume you'd see AOL signup ads when using MS software, but most anything else could be fair game. Mark my words...

  • Answer: the end of the world. (Score:5, Informative)

    by b.foster ( 543648 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:15AM (#3842111)
    Companies are designed from the ground up to act in their own best interest. With that in mind, let's take a look at why the major players in the IM market might not be too keen on a common, universal IM standard.
    • AOL
      • AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market. They were the pioneers; instant messages have been a part of AOL since the service was called AppleLink back in the late 1980s.
      • AOL does not need any more users on its IM network. It does not want more users on the network. Everybody who is anybody has an AIM account.
      • Facilitating compatibility with other IM networks would cost AOL money unnecessarily. They would not be able to install their spyware and ads on your system. And they would not be able to use the competing services to try to get you to join AOL. The economics of the situation favor the current approach.
    • MSN
      • Microsoft would also lose out from giving up the right to blast ads and spyware at all of the users of its network.
      • Microsoft fully intends to leverage a monopoly in the instant messaging arena to further its desktop and server monopoly. At that point they will begin charging for service. This would be less effective if they opened their network.
      • Keeping their network closed encourages more users to get Passport accounts, which Microsoft uses to harvest personal information and sell consumer dossiers and mailing lists.
    • Jabber
      • Jabber.org would benefit from an open IM standard. Unfortunately, Jabber.com would lose its only competitive advantage and would quickly go out of business.
      • Decentralization would make administration simpler, but would be unnecessarily incompatible with the centralized models of AOL, MSN, and (to a large extent) ICQ.
    b.
    • Ummm its nice this person has so much insight into microsofts business plan. I bet lots of corporations would pay big bucks to know MSFT's strategy before everyone else. "Leveraging their instant message monopoly to gain market dominance????" Someone's got their head up there ass. I realize all that msft has done in the past but to assume you know their next move like this guy is crazy. Business 101 tells you that the market changes fast enough that aside from a few indicators you larger are unsure about any future business plans. Nice work buddy.
      • What I don't get is how MSFT is using thier monopoly in the IM arena when an inch above it says, "AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market." Only on Slashdot can MSFT have a monopoly in a market segment that they're a distant second in.
    • These arguments sound an awful like the arguments people made with respects to proprietary online services and the more standards-oriented Internet back when it was just emerging.

      Users demand interoperability. They get annoyed when they cannot communicate with users on a different service. Either the different IM clients today agree on a standard (which already exists: SIP and its descendents), or users are going to make more use of those IM clients like Trillian that interoperate with their proprietary IM service anyway. If they don't support standards, users will stop using their clients.
    • Um, except that:
      • Jabber is an open IM standard. If there's anything Jabber's protocol is, it's open. You may argue that it's not a standard, but that's the reason the Jabber Foundation was formed. We're fighting quite hard to make the Instant Messaging and Presense Protocol (IMPP) group of the IETF make up its mind. We've submitted Jabber to the IETF twice and are continuing to press forward. The IMPP group has been in a standstill for *years*
      • I'd argue that the only useful open IM standard would be a decentralized one. Keeping IM centralized makes no sense if you want everyone to be able to talk to one another
    • "MSN

      Microsoft would also lose out from giving up the right to blast ads and spyware at all of the users of its network.
      Microsoft fully intends to leverage a monopoly in the instant messaging arena to further its desktop and server monopoly. At that point they will begin charging for service. This would be less effective if they opened their network.
      Keeping their network closed encourages more users to get Passport accounts, which Microsoft uses to harvest personal information and sell consumer dossiers and mailing lists."

      From the Trillian [trillian.cc] homepage: Microsoft was kind enough to alert us to a change in the MSN servers that would have negatively affected Trillian. Thanks, Microsoft! "

      Microsoft seems to be playing nice, maybe because they don't have the monopoly on IM and don't see themselves getting it anytime soon. Maybe because of the PR value. "Hey we didn't squelch tiny little Trillian." Whatever their motives, it is still good to see Microsoft playing nice for once. And it goes against your argument.
    • AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market. They were the pioneers; instant messages have been a part of AOL since the service was called AppleLink back in the late 1980s.
      NOS have long had the ability to instant "message" someone with pop up windows. However, it's not the same as today's IMs by a longshot. 1- the messages were instant, but not queued if you were offline. 2- there was no easy way too look up users. 3- it was intranetwork only, outside users couldn't IM you. 4- there was no live chat. ICQ was the first really successful IM client because it incorporated all of the above in a single program, and allowed anyone with a ppp account to connect to its servers.

      AOL does not need any more users on its IM network. It does not want more users on the network. Everybody who is anybody has an AIM account.
      Hmm. You'd think if they didn't want any more users they'd remove links to download the client. I wonder why you think MS wants to take over the world but AOL doesn't. Anyway, everyone uses AIM because... everyone else uses AIM. Well, at least 54% of the IM public uses AIM. If there were a public IM protocol, what would happen to those 54% of users? Well, it depends entirely on how many of those 54% are actually AOL members. I haven't seen the numbers, but I'm sure it's pretty high. AOL would lose advertising to the non-AOL users, true. But what they are really concerned about is losing AOL members, that's their big concern.

      Facilitating compatibility with other IM networks would cost AOL money unnecessarily. They would not be able to install their spyware and ads on your system.
      Yes, that's true. They'll have to do something sneaky like install itself with Netscape.

      And they would not be able to use the competing services to try to get you to join AOL. The economics of the situation favor the current approach.
      People join AOL for more than IM. Those who only want IM download the AIM client only. Why don't they charge for the client? Would the masses leave AIM if they charged non-AOL users say $10 a year just to connect to the servers? I think a lot of people would pay. So it's more than just economics IMHO.

      Microsoft would also lose out from giving up the right to blast ads and spyware at all of the users of its network.
      And how is this different from any other IM client?

      Microsoft fully intends to leverage a monopoly in the instant messaging arena to further its desktop and server monopoly.
      Yawn. I'm sorry, isn't this the same thing we've been saying about EVERY part of Windows for the last decade?

      At that point they will begin charging for service. This would be less effective if they opened their network. Keeping their network closed encourages more users to get Passport accounts, which Microsoft uses to harvest personal information and sell consumer dossiers and mailing lists.
      Of course, this applies to every IM service. AOL wants you to join. They all make you sign up with personal data to help find *new chat partners*. What's the point?

      Jabber.org would benefit from an open IM standard. Unfortunately, Jabber.com would lose its only competitive advantage and would quickly go out of business.
      Jabber.com is in the business to sell IM servers to companies for internal IM use, companies that don't want internal IM traffic routed out to AOL servers and back. More companies would buy the Jabber.com's services if they servers talked to AOL and MS. Since they don't, most companies have installed Jabber strictly for internal use and grudgingly used AIM for external use, or just said "no" to IM. Interoperability would allow Jabber to open many companies that have said "no".

      Let's face it, it's just a big pissing contest. As long as AOL has the margin, nothing will EVER come of this. Create a universal IM protocol and AOL will ignore it, there's no way to force them to use it. Yes, they have control of the majority of users, but it is *not* a monopoly after all.

      If by some chance AOL begins to lose the market, due to declining AOL membership or loss of users to a newer program, then and only then will AOL relent and agree to a universal protocol. Of course, if they're lucky, MS and Yahoo will already have signed on. If not, and MSN messenger takes the lead, then all the MS preaching goes out the window and they now protect their own protcol.

  • like, duh

    Newsflash: private interests dont co-operate for the greater public good, especially wrt protocals and standards. News at 11!

  • Simple (Score:4, Funny)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:16AM (#3842131)
    what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?

    Microsoft buying AOLTW ?
  • It's called IRC ;)

    I know enough people who use IM clients because it's easier to use than IRC clients.
    Perhaps a cheesy, modified (read: VERY easy to use IRC client, with smilies, "send" buttons AND an option "start up when windows is booting" ;)) would solve the problem for everyone.
    Hell, if you take a good look at IM systems, they aren't that different from IRC anyway, they are just really limited and leave out most of the advanced options.
    ofcourse, on the other hand, I would like to see an IRC network capable of handling the millions of IM users. (imagine trying to explain to a user that he can't message to his friend because there is a netsplit)

    You know what, skip that thought, IRC is already filled with nitwit morons, we don't need another 10 million of them spamming the networks :p

    • If someone didn't say this I was going to.

      Let's see the logic of this whole article and debate:

      Let's try to get mega-corps with proprietary software and protocols to play nice with each other EVEN THOUGH there is already an existing protocol and network that is a standard, open, and mature.

      Logically it will be much easier to make IRC easier to use and beef up the network as opposed to making direct competitors who individually seek world domination to hug each other.

      C'mon man, supporting and trying to influence proprietary software and protocols that are entrnched in "megacorp strategy" is hedging back to the days when you either had Prodigy or Compuserve and that's it -- neither would talk to each other and neither shared content. The Internet fixed that and now we're pushing back to it again with the MSN/AOL battles. Yet the average stupid American support one or the other because it is 'easy to use' or 'I can IM'.

      What was that recent article about 'user friendly' is sometimes a consumer laziness issue?
  • I use Trillian [ceruleanstudios.com] - it integrates AOL, MSN, Yahoo!IM, ICQ and IRC all in one app. It's got a lot of great features you don't find on the native apps, but it's missing some functionality, like file transfer and webcam integration that you can get in some apps.

  • The three players in IM briefly formed "IMUnited" for the purpose of a press release, but this effort is now dead. They're more interested in attrition at this point - particularly Microsoft, which has seen the highest growth rate for its own IM product (albeit through automatic logins through XP).

    The long term loser in this game is probably AOL, which will see its IM useage decrease as the AOL service inevitably (continues to) loses customers.

  • .....One IM to rule them all, one IM to find them
    one IM to connect to them all and in the darkness bind them

  • Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by medcalf ( 68293 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:24AM (#3842229) Homepage
    It seems to me that the ideal solution would be for everyone to agree on a single protocol. This will not happen. You see, it used to be that someone would come out with a protocol and client and server implementations, and would release them into the wild. Then, people would either use it (like IRC) or not (like UNIX's talk command). If they did, then other and better implementations would come out, as long as the protocol was solid. This is how email, FTP, HTTP and many other common Internet protocols were developed.

    Now, though, companies create the protocols and allow them only to the chosen few who use their software (think AOL for IM and Real for streaming content). The protocol is not generally available, meaning better clients can't be made, and there is often a dependence upon resources wholly owned by a single company. Sometimes (again AOL and Real come to mind) these are genuinely useful. In that case, someone (another company, generally) will produce a competing product, that does the same thing in a different way.

    Some people will choose one method and some will choose another. Users cannot force standardization. The corporate developers are being paid to enforce balkanization, rather than to work towards standardization. Independent developers cannot get enough of a critical mass to make it feasible for users to migrate to their systems, or for corporations to adopt the independent methods as a matter of convenience.

    The net result, no pun intended, is that there is no way to move to a standard. This leaves us with the options of using a client which speaks all of the different protocols, choosing to pocket ourselves into a small part of the possible Internet community (with corresponding obeisance to the local corporate power), or choosing to cover our screen with all of the various blessed programs. Only a unified client holds any real appeal to me, and that is fraught with problems. For example, try talking to AIM when AOL keeps changing the way the servers work on the back end! It's a nontrivial problem.

    So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that expecting a unified IM system to appear, just because it makes sense from a user perspective, is not very likely to be worth anyone's while.

  • ISPs could lead (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Logic Bomb ( 122875 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:24AM (#3842238)
    Um... the big IM-ers are for-profit companies. They may some day decide that a "strategic balance" (a la the US and USSR) is best, but for now there is still growth to be had and they are in COMPETITION. Why on earth does anyone think they are going to unify or purposely allow cross-network access?

    I look to Jabber as the foundation of sensible IM-ing; users are screenname@jabber.server.address, and messaging users on multiple "services" is just a matter of adding them to your buddy list. No funky add-ons or protocol descriptors needed. Only problem is, Jabber isn't useful as a revenue generator. But what if IM-ing simply became a standard ISP feature? If each ISP ran a Jabber-type server, you'd just need someone's email address to reach him.

    Since IM-ing is obviously becoming as widely used as email, why isn't it a part of the standard service package? If distributed, like Jabber, I can't see it placing a huge burden on even very small ISPs.

  • Is there anything really useful that any instant messanger does that could NOT be done via a tray-application communication over IRC? You can still have messages pop up or be displayed in various styles. You can still have some sort of encryption over IRC if you wanted to Im sure. Transfer files? sure, thats what DCC is for. ICQ supports sending messages when the user if offline, but it hardly works since they might not gett the message for days. Most other IMs require the user to be online. I look at something like Trillian, with IRC support built in, and wonder what is great and new about the ICQ/Y!/MSM/AIM protocols? Do they really let you do anything different?

  • email (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrResistor ( 120588 ) <peterahoff@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:32AM (#3842304) Homepage
    Email is pretty much standardized on one app, and look how great that's been!

    Seriously, we recognize the dangers of monoculture in other areas of computing -- OS, email client, etc. -- what makes people think that IM is going to be any better? I'd think the last thing we'd want in computing is another monoculture.

    I know the question is not when will IM be ruled by a single client but rather when will IM clients be interoperable, but is there really any chance of it happening another way? These are big corporations! These are the same people who keep us perpetually 3-5 years behind the rest of the world on cellphone technology!

  • CenterICQ (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dmarien ( 523922 ) <dmarienNO@SPAMdmarien.com> on Monday July 08, 2002 @10:35AM (#3842327) Homepage
    CenterICQ [centericq.de] is a text based console app which uses ncurses, and color themes.

    It supports AIM, Yahoo! ICQ, MSN Messenger, and IRC.

    cICQ has the best interface of any console app I have ever used, and the developer Konst, reponds to almost anything posting to the mailing list... I myself have had almost a dozen of the features I requested added to the program.

    The program is completely stable, supports chat mode for all protocols, full history, ignore lists, contact groups, non IM contacts, collapsable groups, hide offline users, etc.... honestly -- this program has almost every worth while feature I've ever seen in any IM client -- not to mention that it supports every single protocol seamlessly, so the user (unless he/she organized contacts into groups based on protocol, wouldn't even know what protocol their contacts were using...Mbr>
    whatever, enough rambling... download this program, and support Konst's development!

    download link [centericq.de]
  • Before more people post "Just use Jabber!" or "Trillian already does this!" keep this in mind:

    With these clients, you still need an account (and a software interface) for multiple IM services.

    That is, you may have a single client, but you've still got multiple AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts. Maybe even a jabber account (and that one isn't even universal -- it's based on wherever your account's server).

    What is needed is, essentially, SMTP for IM. A way to embed a service name/address into the message traffic. So that, for example, a user "harry.truman" on MSN could send, using MSN, an IM to "aim:dcooper", and have it go through. A little quiet reflection should convince you that this is a server-side problem, and one the current services haven't addressed. (I'll leave the question of why, be it technical, political, or economic reasons, to others).

    Anyway, I've already seen a couple "just use trillian" sort of responses and wanted to head 'em off. :)

    • Quote:
      === Cut ===
      That is, you may have a single client, but you've still got multiple AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts. Maybe even a jabber account (and that one isn't even universal -- it's based on wherever your account's server).

      What is needed is, essentially, SMTP for IM. A way to embed a service name/address into the message traffic. So that, for example, a user "harry.truman" on MSN could send, using MSN, an IM to "aim:dcooper", and have it go through. A little quiet reflection should convince you that this is a server-side problem, and one the current services haven't addressed. (I'll leave the question of why, be it technical, political, or economic reasons, to others).
      === Cut ===

      Huh? Isn't that exactly what jabber do? There are several jabber servers on the net and you can run your own if you like. It works very much like email and your address looks like an emailaddress. You don't have to be on the same jabber server to talk to each other.
      • Huh? Isn't that exactly what jabber do? There are several jabber servers on the net and you can run your own if you like. It works very much like email and your address looks like an emailaddress.

        True, the approach is very like what I described (and is probably where I channeled my post from :) ), but it only works for people using *jabber*. The "big four" IM systems don't support this, and until they do, we'll never see the united IM system that I thought we were talking about.

        Plus, one downside to Jabber is that, if your server happens to go down, it doesn't "route around" it in any way. Granted, neither does AOL (except in terms of local-to-AOL round-robin or hot-spare servers), but when you've got a bunch of lesser-funded servers with less reliable performance, having some way to temporarily "move" your profile to another server (and have people be able to find you transparently) becomes critical. This may have changed, I haven't used Jabber in a while, 'cause everyone I talked to uses AIM and AOL hates Jabber servers, it seems...
  • Just building a better protocol, client, etc. will not guarantee a monopoly shift. I consider myself a die hard IM user, and I've tried switching several times away from my mainstay IM provider, AIM. Until a critical mass switches, you're fighting a losing battle.

    However, each time, it was derailed by AOL blocking the interoperability that allowed this new procotol or client to reach my existing buddies still on AIM. For Jabber, AOL first blocked the connections form Jabber's AIM-t, then just started blocking the Class C of Jabber servers. For Trillian, they started blocking users found using Trillian clients.

    Fortunately, Trillian is working now, and has been for a few months. But if it gets blocked again, I'll have to switch back to AOL's (crappy) client.

    What I need is for my buddies to switch to something (say, Jabber). But they won't switch until their buddies switch. And so-on.

    Maybe someone should introduce a Burn-AIM day or Burn-ICQ day, much like the Burn GIF day. It would require a lot of pushing for it, and plenty of readily available and EASy materials for users to switch. Maybe even a latter cut-off day when people stop dual-IM'ing.

    BUt I'm not even sure if I'd participate!
  • Purly and simply, the IM services will become interoperable when AOL includews webcasting in their service. When the AOL-Time/Warner merger went through, there was a lot of push for the FTC to require AOL to open up their IM service. The compromise that was reached is that they are required to open it up, once their IM service incorporates video, be it webcastiing, integrated movie trailers or what have you.

    It's likely that AOL will take this step and make this compormise around the end of the year. Both MSN and Yahoo's support of webcams is too much of an ongoing advantage for AOL to stay out of the market due to stubbornness.

    When that happens, expect a lot more ongoing innovation for each service to make themselves unique. Things like Yahoo's IMVironments are there in part to keep customers loyal to a single IM client even after the platforms all become interoperable.

    In short, it'll all be about the innovation.

  • AOL's proposal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) <{moc.yggorhp} {ta} {3todhsals}> on Monday July 08, 2002 @11:19AM (#3842635) Homepage
    AOL's proposed solution [aol.com], which was submitted to the IETF. Nobody, including AOL, really takes it seriously. I'm not entirely sure why.

    Basically, the concept is this: anyone - AOL or Microsoft or Yahoo or Joe Blow down the street - can run their own IM service. Every IM user has a username/screen name, and every IM service has a domain name (aol.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, joeblow.net). All you need to send an IM from one service to another is the username and domain, which would look like an e-mail address and might actually be an e-mail address.

    When you send e-mail from one address to another, you send the message to your (ISP's) SMTP server, which looks up the domain name you're sending the message to, gets the SMTP server defined in the MX (mail exchange) record for the domain, and sends the message there. Under this proposal, a new record type would be added to DNS, an IMX record that specifies which server can handle IM connections.

    So, say you're on Yahoo Messenger. You want to send an IM to another Yahoo user, Yahoo takes care of that and it's nobody else's business. You want to send an IM to an AOL user, you send it to Yahoo's servers, Yahoo lookup aol.com and contacts the server defined in the IMX record. For security AOL looks up the IMX record for yahoo.com too, and they do a three-way handshake. The message is sent, and it appears to the AOL user like an IM that came from joebob@yahoo.com.

    Of course for redundancy and load balancing there can be multiple IMX records, just like there can be multiple MX records for e-mail. It's been awhile since I read the proposal; there's more to it than that. It may not be perfect, but it would have been an open standard that anyone could use, not limited to just the big companies.

    • Re:AOL's proposal (Score:4, Informative)

      by chefmonkey ( 140671 ) on Monday July 08, 2002 @12:01PM (#3842958)
      AOL has abandoned support for the initiative you site (about two years ago, in fact). They are now throwing their support (along with Microsoft) behind an IETF emerging standard called SIPMLE. See this article [nwfusion.com] for confirmation of AOL's support of SIMPLE.

    • Re:AOL's proposal (Score:3, Informative)

      by slamb ( 119285 )
      All you need to send an IM from one service to another is the username and domain, which would look like an e-mail address and might actually be an e-mail address.

      Jabber addresses are like that.

      When you send e-mail from one address to another, you send the message to your (ISP's) SMTP server, which looks up the domain name you're sending the message to, gets the SMTP server defined in the MX (mail exchange) record for the domain, and sends the message there. Under this proposal, a new record type would be added to DNS, an IMX record that specifies which server can handle IM connections.

      This is how the Jabber transport works as well. Except that instead of creating a new DNS RR, they used SRV records. SRV records are a generalization of this concept. They are beginning to be used for LDAP, Kerberos, Jabber, etc. (Try "host -t srv _ldap._tcp.uiowa.edu", for example.)

      That's really the only way to go. I will never be happy with instant messaging until it is decentralized like email. Providing a way of looking up the correct server with the address and the existing infrastructure (DNS) is the only way to go.

  • I see a lot of talking about Trillian for Win32... but there is a sweet little app for MacOS X that does the same thing, called Fire.

    Has all the major IM apps and IRC, all in one client.

    Maybe someone could port it to BSD... uh-oh, I think I'm entering TrollLand, better shut up now!
  • Whoever said it was bad having different networks? It's competition, you know, the same thing we all want to happen with Operating Systems. If all the networks united into one big monolithic network, chances are eventually someone would use that to their advantage and we'd be back here, again, bitching that there are no instant messaging alternatives. I say keep it the way it is.
  • what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?
    Hmmmm.... Maybe Microsoft???
  • A: Yes. It already has. See everybuddy [everybuddy.com]. Next question.

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