Leader: IM interoperability - so close and yet so far

Yesterday the 'Big Three' instant-messaging players - Yahoo!, AOL and Microsoft - made what was viewed by many as a step towards settling their ongoing interoperability wars.

The companies announced that later this year corporate types using Microsoft's Live Communications Server will be able to instant message each other - no matter whether they use AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger.

But - and it's a big but - the concession is only for the corporate world. Those using these companies' public IM clients will still be able to send messages only to users of the same software.

Our verdict: close, but no cigar.

Yes, it's good to see the IM companies warming to each other, since interoperability is clearly the way to go.

What's so special about IM that it needs to be exclusive? Can you imagine if Outlook users were not able to send email to users of other mail clients? Or if you could phone only individuals who use the same service provider as you?

Of course not.

Yet the progress towards true IM interoperability seems unbearably slow and painful. While analysts called yesterday's news "remarkable" because they never thought Microsoft would go along with it, there is still so far to go.

Returning to phones, IM companies could well learn something from the mobile phone operators and text messaging.

At first, users could only send text messages to people on the same mobile service provider as them - but then the operators got smart and realised, since customers are charged a per-message fee, that the more people you could send messages to, the more money for them.

Now IM is a bit different, admittedly, because you aren't charged a per-message fee but the word from customers is clear: we want to send messages to all of our IM buddies!

And for The Big Three to continue to fight this is self-defeating.

It's not like they're making tons of money off IM, so why not get customers on their side? It would also mean expanding their audiences so that if the operators do start charging for extra features down the road, they'll have that many more people to charge.

Interoperability is the right thing to do, for operators and customers. Now let's get on with it.