IMteroperable? isn't it amazing, dear?

What is really the best in Microsoft and Yahoo! interoperability announcement is the part, were the customers of the two services:

will be among the first to exchange instant messages across the free services as well as see their friends’ online presence, view personal status messages, share select emoticons, view offline messages and add new contacts from either service at no cost.

So, paying interoperability was amongst the options? Such an unashamed attitude is simply amazing.

I leave you to read the rest of this marketing verbiage and discover how 350 millions where left out of a vast commodity service offered to the XMPP federation for over five years now. You will be surprised to discover that Microsoft and Yahoo!

are proud to deliver this latest advancement in IM services that empower people to communicate with virtually whomever they want, wherever they want and whenever they want.

and that the latest advancement they are referring to is simply that

Consumers worldwide from Microsoft and Yahoo! will be able to take advantage of IM interoperability and join the limited public beta program. They will be among the first to exchange instant messages across the free services as well as see their friends’ online presence, view personal status.

Beyond the fact it looks like an April’s fool day’s press release, I am just wondering how, in our days of user’s empowerment, 350 millions still bear that kind of arrogance from such dinosaurs. But you never know, Microsoft and Yahoo! may well push it further and claim a patent on IM interoperability by tomorrow...

Anyway, this is again a reminder of a sad reality. We find today a bunch of IM services attempting to emulate the grotesque attitude of wireless carriers. Walled gardens are not only alienating, they are essentially hostile to the customer. Customers, beyond an enormous frustration feeling, should have a greater say in the matter. It will be interesting to watch how they will assert their rights, because, from the tone of this announcement,  the IM providers are in a rather arrogant mood.

In the end, what worries me more is the flabergasted attitude expressed by this kind of post. But when someone describes Trillian or Adium as services, no wonder it also writes “IM interoperability took so long that I thought it was never going to happen”. But today everything has changed. Isn’t this really an amazing world?

Technorati Tags: XMPP, Jabber, Interoperability, Antecipate