Randy Charles Morin blogs for the sake of blogging.
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Nathan Weinberg: InternetWeek reports that MSN and Yahoo will announce on Wednesday interoperability between their instant messenger services, a move that will likely put a hammer on the hopes of other IM services.
Randy: Nathan also suggests that this is bad news for Gtalk.
Nathan Weinberg: This is a development that could greatly hurt Google Talk.
Randy: I've got some news for everybody. I use Gtalk and Skype at work. I don't use Yahoo! and MSN at work. Why? Because, the IT department blocks both Yahoo! and MSN and many other employers outside of the tech valley block them too. The reason Gtalk isn't blocked is because it's new and our IT department hasn't heard or bothered to block them yet. Don't get me wrong, there are ways around the blocking, but mundane users are not going to bother. They'll use Gtalk. And when they block Gtalk, they'll use Skype. My point? Interop is nice, but it's easy to block. Now, try blocking my proprietary HTTP port 80 based protocol. Proprietary IMs will survive until IT departments begin to trust IM, like they trust the Web. That could be a long time.
Update: The announcement was confirmed by both Yahoo and Microsoft.
Randy
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