“Now the barrier between two previously inaccessible territories of online chat is coming down.”
New York — Just last week Google and Yahoo agreed on a search advertising deal to be run on some of their search result pages in USA and Canada. In addition, the two companies also “agreed to allow interoperability between their respective instant-messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users,” the companies said Thursday.
“Instant messaging, a small component in the new alliance between Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. may produce a large motor of growth in the long term.”
Although instant-messaging services do not produce much revenue, they provide as signposts directing users to various Internet portals. Google’s push to make Yahoo’s more popular Messenger work with its own lagging Google Talk exhibits the importance placed on the feature. Instant messaging, or IM, has been observed as playing a crucial role in the battle for eyeballs in the mobile arena — and possibly more so with Google’s mobile operating system Android.
“In the mobile story, instant messaging will be more important,” said Michael Wolf, an analyst at ABI Research. “Right now, it is a fuzzy business proposition.”
So far, precisely what that means is anyone’s guess. But the IM market might certainly benefit from a little more interchanging. Despite the fact that IM use is on the rise among home users and businesses alike, each separate IM network remains a walled garden, independent of all the others. Getting them to work together — similar to how e-mail works — would benefit everyone.
IM is a valuable though sometimes intrusive tool, especially in this day and age when the Internet has tightened ties among co-workers, family, and friends. IM nowadays is similar to the early period of electronic mail, when users could not send messages between incompatible services such as AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe.
But largely masses and organizations do not always utilize a similar network, meaning that power users either must run multiple IM programs or try to bridge the divide with multi-protocol packages such as Trillian, Adium, Digsby, Kopete, or Pidgin.
Nonetheless, it is considered as a minor victory for Google because usage of its IM service falls behind its more-established competitors. In terms of audience reach, Yahoo holds a slight lead with 23% of U.S. users, according to an October 2007 survey by research firm IDC. AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., trailed closely with 22% of users, while Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Messenger was at 18%. Google Talk reached 5% of users, according to IDC.
Yahoo has already joined forces with Microsoft to allow the users of their instant messengers communicate with each other, and Google Talk already cooperates with AOL’s Instant Messenger. Now, Yahoo Messenger users are expected to get the ability to add and talk with friends using Google Talk!
“The companies expect their moves will give them an edge over their rivals now that the PC search business has been largely set.”
That is a great development in the right direction!