Testing Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger Interoperability

[Jeff]

We first reported the announcement of Yahoo/MSN Messenger interoperability back in October 2005. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have continued to promise that interoperability would be available sometime in the second quarter of 2006. The end of the second quarter is fast approaching, and Windows Live Messenger team member Leah reports that testing on an interoperable version of Windows Live Messenger is underway.

What can you expect? You'll be able to merge your buddy lists, and it will definitely support basic instant messaging capability. No voice chat for now, and no public beta yet.

I suspect we'll see another private release for the "beta butterflies", followed soon after by a public beta.

It appears that Microsoft and Yahoo are going to beat Google and AOL to market with the first major pairing of interoperable IM networks.

[MrEggsalad]

This is one great step, soon we will just have really 2 main..then hopefully those will all come together.

[Baloo Ursidae]

Well, there's three. There's Oscar (AIM/ICQ), there's MSN Yahoo, and then there's Jabber (also accessible from Google Talk). Of these three, only Jabber is on it's way to becoming IETF standard. Jabber has a couple million more users than Yahoo these days.

If you're looking for IM unification, the future is now: Give Jabber a spin, and tell your friends.

If you're on Google Mail, your email address is also your Jabber ID, and most clients (with the notable exception of Trillian) support Jabber fairly well.

[shifter]

It's heeeere! If you're running the beta of WLM simply sign out and back in, same with Y!M, you'll need to be part of the beta and simply sign out and in again to chat with WLM contacts! Sweet!