{"id":126,"date":"2005-12-21T15:06:32","date_gmt":"2005-12-21T20:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/index.php\/2005\/12\/21\/will-google-aol-help-consolidate-im\/"},"modified":"2005-12-21T15:06:32","modified_gmt":"2005-12-21T20:06:32","slug":"will-google-aol-help-consolidate-im","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2005\/12\/21\/will-google-aol-help-consolidate-im\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Google-AOL help consolidate IM?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may be nothing but a footnote to the Google-AOL deal, but to me (and others like Stowe Boyd at Corante<\/a> and Gary Price at SearchEngineWatch<\/a>) the proposal to blend GTalk and AIM into a seamless instant messaging service is the icing on the cake — and if there’s one thing I love, it’s icing.<\/p>\n

It may take some technical voodoo, but at least it takes us down to two main networks — since Microsoft and Yahoo have said they plan to make theirs interoperable<\/a>. I’ve been using Trillian<\/a>and Gaim <\/a>(which Paul Kedrosky over at Infectious Greed also seems to like<\/a>) because I know so many people on other networks, and I haven’t used GTalk because I know most of them won’t switch applications just to talk to me. <\/p>\n

And why should they? It’s like asking people to get a new cellphone because your phone can’t call theirs. It’s absurd — and that means it has to change. Will Microsoft or Yahoo ever agree to make their networks compatible with GTalk<\/a>? It seems pretty unlikely right now, since all the big companies seem to see IM as a kind of Trojan horse that can bring VOIP and a host of other services to users, and help achieve “lock-in.” <\/p>\n

I think they are wrong. Lock-in is something that very few companies achieve (operating systems<\/a> being one of the main exceptions) and it’s particularly unlikely to happen when — as with IM — the whole point of the software is to be more connected and communicate with others. Anyone who facilitates that, whether it’s Trillian or Gaim or Meebo <\/a>and other Web-based IM clients, will benefit.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b><\/p>\n

Julian Bond at Voidstar has some interesting thoughts<\/a> on the IM front as it relates to VOIP, and the Googletalk blog has some more info if you’re interested in that angle and how it relates to Libjingle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It may be nothing but a footnote to the Google-AOL deal, but to me (and others like Stowe Boyd at Corante and Gary Price at SearchEngineWatch) the proposal to blend GTalk and AIM into a seamless instant messaging service is the icing on the cake — and if there’s one thing I love, it’s icing. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Will Google-AOL help consolidate IM?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}