Shoutbox

MSN and YIM to Merge
   

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Yahoo and Microsoft have announced on Wednesday that due to fierce competition with AOL and ICQ that MSN and YIM will merge networks to obtain 44 per cent of the Instant Messenger market.
     
   
Another reason Yahoo and Microsoft are merging networks is because of the popularity of internet voice chat communications, a strong competitor being Skype and Google Talk.

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Source

Nice, so if they work together ,that might be good for the users...

Would that mean MSN.com and Yahoo.com will merge?... That'd be one kick-ass internet site.

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Originally posted by qgroessl
Would that mean MSN.com and Yahoo.com will merge?... That'd be one kick-ass internet site.

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i think it means just the instant messengers

probably just cross compatability or something

Is this why there was a big increase in the contact size? Because 600 is way too much for MSN if you ask me.

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Originally posted by Exca
Nice, so if they work together ,that might be good for the users...

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but they could just bloat it up too

I really don't expect this to go ahead...a while ago AOL and MSN had almost the same talks, and nothing came of it.

I'm not really in total favour of this (if it goes ahead), every time a new upgrade comes out for either Yahoo or MSN Messenger, they'll have to consider whether this will be worth spending time on if the other client will get baffled with the new information.
Each side will always be trying to make it friendly for the other client, which will limit feature development. Not to mention the legal extra proceedings that will have to go ahead for each new build.

If this goes ahead, then thank god for it. Yahoo Chat is the most bot filled network of bots I have ever seen in my entire life.

Maybe this is why the MSN team has been "stealing" features from Yahoo and incorperating them into MSN Messenger !

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Originally posted by qgroessl
Would that mean MSN.com and Yahoo.com will merge?... That'd be one kick-ass internet site.

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Its not really a merger in the strict meaning.....just an agreement to be compatible with each others networks so users can talk to each other across the two...

But by combining to create one super IM community, the market power of the two increases dramatically!

I too, find it unlikely, but if it did go ahead, I wouldn't have a problem with it, providing they don't bloat the software anymore. It's bad enough as it is. They need to work on the quality of the client, not the quantity of features...

As a sidenote, I read in a UK PC Magazine, that Google have said they want GT to allow users to talk to IM users of all other networks. In other words they want GT to be a multi-protocol messenger...