Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger Interoperability: Is Yahoo Adding Salt to the Microsoft Wounds?
In the press release that solemnized the deal between Google and Yahoo to display Google ads in Yahoo search results, there was also another announcement that Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk would have interoperability. In plain words it works out to you being able to message your friends from Google Talk through Yahoo Messenger and vice versa.
Both Yahoo and Google Talk are not new to having interoperability with different messenger clients.
Yahoo being the first one in the race had interoperability with Windows Live Messenger back in 2006. Late last year Google too announced a interoperability with AIM messenger (they have a 5% stake in AOL, the parent company of AIM owned by Time Warner).
With the recent Microsoft and Yahoo showdown it has been quite known that there has been no love lost between the two of them, the Google deal not only rubs salt into Microsoft wounds, but the interoperability between the messengers also leaves Windows Live Messenger quite a lot to lose against.
Yahoo Messenger recently rolled out a new feature to import contacts from various sites including both Windows Live and Google accounts which underlines their strategy of bringing more and more users under the Yahoo Messenger fold. Disclaimer: I am the lead developer for the third party service that works in the back-end to bring this feature into Yahoo Messenger.
With the interoperability deal both Yahoo and Google Talk they can ensure that they will be taking more and more users towards their own bases and quite frankly the features Yahoo Messenger has been rolling out have been much better than both Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk.
My views are not biased between any of the three companies but frankly Microsoft is losing the plot in the web world and they are definitely losing a lot of money too providing cash backs and signing deals like the $6 billion payout for aQuantative, but with cash cows like the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office suite bringing them billions and billions of dollars profits each year, who are we to complain?
Ashish Mohta
June 14th, 2008 at 12:33 am #
This is some good news for us anyway.
But on the other way round whats yahoo is doing is not good. This will all lead to Google Dominance everywhere and people will start hating them soon too.
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nigelmcloughlin
June 14th, 2008 at 4:04 am #
looks like everybody hates microsoft right now. I think they have to find an urgent solution for this, bringing new and fresh innovation/s might boost their image.
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Pallab
June 17th, 2008 at 9:45 am #
What wound?
I dont think Microsoft has been really hurt in any of this. There is only one company which has been damaged and that’s Yahoo.
Yahoo is bleeding.. and this deal is just suicidal.
How can they be so stupid? They will be displaying Google Adsense ads, which already provide highest CPC, and will be helping google adsense get more eyeballs. In the process they would be reducing motivation for advertiser to use their own ad service. They would be driving the cpc down for their own service and hence would become more and more reliant on google adsense!
The YM and Gtalk interoperability is the only good thing in this deal. This deal is stupid and I hope someone somewhere shoots it down.
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FG
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 am #
Yahoo should just merge under google and die off , Yahoo is outdated load of crap , I personally don’t see any reason yahoo even needs to remain in business . Google is the future even microsoft knows this . I can see a google OS in 10 years to take over where MS stops at .
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pac pac
September 1st, 2009 at 1:44 am #
its september of 2009, where’s this interoperability ???
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