IM Islands
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Yahoo's recent closure of its IM gateway to 3rd party users, specifically Trillian (see "IM Networks Uphold Isolation: Death to Trillian"). In that post, I noted that Yahoo! named SPIM as its scapegoat but suggested doubts that the truth was out in the open.
One of my main assertions was that "Money Maintains Separation". This received quite a few comments, on both sides of the fence. Some believed that I didn't have enough evidence to really discount Yahoo's explanation. Others were fully in support that the "capitalists" were in control of the keys.
I came across a mention on Renee's Blog that pointed to some News.com coverage I missed. Charlie Cooper resonates some of the ideas I had cited, and adds some more fuel.
Nobody's yet figured out how to make a business of instant messaging, but AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo must know where all this is headed. In the future, these companies are going to become more like phone companies and will want to bundle "value added" communications services with Internet access features. All it takes is a big broadband pipe and agreement on the protocols of communications.
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Years ago, the technology world came up with an ungainly term that really says it all: "interoperability." Instant messaging has become hugely popular in the last five years. Now it's a question of breaking down old barriers. The Big Three each have their particular agendas, but helping to smooth things for the rest of us is surely in their enlightened self-interest.
I'm curious, though, at what rate we might expect change. Almost any web developer can tell you that IE is a terrible browser when it comes to standards support. Granted, the community of Standards Gear Heads is only a subset of the web developer community as a whole, however, it's not small. Despite that seeming "pressure" Microsoft hasn't been compelled to really move forward much at all in years with the IE codebase, except to plug the heavily leaking ship.
Monopolies seem to retard change that's in the direction of the monster's momentum. Do we really get what we want by pushing back? What formats and techniques do we use to fight? If we're always downloading the latest version but complaining about Bug #1212122, can we really expect someone up there to think it matters?