Tags: Microsoft

Yahoo! Messenger will now talk with MSN Messenger

In perhaps the first case of its kind amongst the giants of the instant messaging service providers, Microsoft and Yahoo! have collaborated to bring interoperability between their own messengers. The companies have reached a deal to make their two instant messaging programs work together. This would help them compete against the emerging threat of Google Talk and existing biggies like the AOL Messenger and ICQ.

The deal was announced today and with this, users of one messenger would be able to communicate with the users of another one. This would let them avoid running two messenger applications to keep in touch with all your friends and relatives. Until now, the only way users could do this was by using third party applications like Gaim, Trillian, Meetro, and Miranda.

Microsoft has been working hard on making MSN and its associated services popular in the market. Interestingly, this comes at a time when they are already in talks with AOL over a collaboration with the MSN range of web services. None of the representatives of Microsoft, MSN, Yahoo!, or AOL has yet commented on this pact.

AOL is currently the dominating force in the Instant Messaging services. They are said to have around 53 million unique US users in August, compared to about 29 million for the competing MSN messenger and 23 million for yahoo’s messenger.