Yahoo Messenger Blocks Outside IM Clients 367
jj00 writes "CNET News is reporting that Yahoo has started blocking 3rd party Messenger clients from their service. The article is about Trillian, but I have noticed that my gaim client hasn't been working for the past few days." As reported earlier.
nah (Score:5, Insightful)
Please find a backdoor for Y! and MSN! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't mind using the original Yahoo! client, however, I also have ICQ, MSN and AIM accounts that I run at the same time, so having four different big apps running at the same time is just not nice, takes space, cpu, memory and their interfaces are bloated and irrelevant for the thing I want to do: simple IM.
This is why, I have to use Trillian or Gaim: simplicty, small interfaces, easy to have all contacts in the same place.
If Yahoo or anyone else made their client to support all 4 protocols, I wouldn't have a problem using one of them instead of trillian or gaim. But until they do, I really need an integrated solution, not a mess on my desktop!
Their Network (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like their rules (I don't), why don't create a free/open/documented IM network? Make it better than the commercial offerings, and people will come.
How's Jabber doing these days, anyway?
They're cutting their own throats (Score:5, Insightful)
In a related story, NBC has decided to make their broadcast signal only work on a G.E. television. Brilliant move boys!
Re:why is this even an issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this ? The regular user wouldn't recognize code if I hit him in the head with it. To him it doesn't matter if his chatting protocol is open source or not, he just wants to reach his those on his buddy list.
The lesson to be learned here (Score:5, Insightful)
Never trust a corporation with anything you value or at least with proper constraints over that corporation.
If you want to feel safe that you can use your service tomorrow too then run jabber [jabber.org] or any other service that you can run a server for if your main server stops.
Serves people right for trusting closed systems.
Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
But yeah, it's their service that they freely offer, they are logically allowed to control who accesses it. I do not disagree at all.
I don't think it's meant as a block. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo say they're open to talking to 3rd parties (Score:2, Insightful)
Check this story [com.com] out from new.com.com.
Jumping to the conclusion that their intent is to block 3rd party clients is just wrong, according to this.
It sounds reasonable to occasionally force an upgrade, particularly in the interest of protecting privacy.
Re:GAIM, jabber too? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ohh yeh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the hell do you expect that everything should be free?
Re:Their Network (Score:5, Insightful)
So we should just crawl into a hole and die?
IM is not owned by any company yet, let alone MSFT. An Open alternative has a good position to beat the proprietary opposition, especially as it is quite divided already. Open Standards are the "in" thing right now.
Wouldn't it be fabulous if various Corporate platforms (Notes, etc.) chose to use the Jabber protocol as the IM solution? Then everyone would be running Jabber clients already, and communicating with friends would be a natural extension of that activity. I took a look at the Jabber page, inspired by this article, and saw that they are co-operating with IETF to standardize the protocol... and therein lies the future.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Their Network (Score:5, Insightful)
Wired plugged two independent IM apps, Trillian included, giving both of them positive reviews. Doth not Microsoft advertise in Wired? I don't have the print copy of that issue but I'd be seriously surprised if there was not a Microsoft advert in it.
Where does KaZaA advertise? That's right, nowhere; they created a product that people like (as junky as it may be), so people use it, and tell their friends. When was the last time you were browsing a trade magazine and saw a full-page color ad for Apache? That's what I thought. Yet Apache is everywhere, even on Windows, even with numerous competitors.
Open source/free/alternative software doesn't need to advertise. When it's good, its user base will take care of promotion and evangelizing.
All that said, I don't really see any sort of open source IM initiative taking over. When it comes to IM, the fact is that people want to be on the same network as most or all of their friends. That means a centralized network (or at least a 100% interoperable collection of smaller networks), and that means a lot of bandwidth. Unless IBM, or Sun, or Redhat, or Google decide to pour a few spare millions into operating the infrastructure to power an open IM network, I don't see any "OSS friendly" company ever dominating the IM space.
Is (Score:1, Insightful)
I really think we should not think sympathetically about this. Consider this metaphor:
Unless you are an AT&T subscriber, you can't call people with AT&T phones.
How is that essentially different? Yet, people would not tolerate the above. Why should they with IM?
Re:Well.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Memory is really not an issue these days either, considering how cheap it is.
I work at a store that also repairs computers. I can tell you that while memory is cheap, there are a lot of people who are still running older machines. People bring in Pentium I's and II's all the time. Even the occasional 486 shows up. Besides, once you have ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Kazaa, Weatherbug, Gator, Comet Cursors, Norton Anti-Virus, Mcaffee, Office quick start, Cox quick connect, etc, etc, etc, running, I've seen Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz machines that make a Duran 700Mhz machine look super fast.
Post b:
My client still works fine; it's just too bad if Trillian (whose newest beta version still works, BTW) or some other 3rd party meta-IM client gets boked along with all the spammers.
The point of being able to use Trillian is to have one client for multiple networks. I use Trillian so I don't have to care which network someone is on. I'm on all of them. A single uniform client, with a single interface for each.
I don't worry about losing connectivity to one network for a short while, all the people I really want to talk to have multiple types of accounts as well.
Re:Their Network (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, here on Earth, many people use IM to talk to non-geek friends who probably don't understand why you can't just use the "official client" anyway.
Really, posts saying "it's their network, they can do as they please" piss me off. It's like saying, "hey, this company owns the road network around where you live, they can do what they like! If they decide to ban your old Mini from the roads, just move somewhere else where they don't own the roads".
In other words, it's not a realistic proposition. I'd love to abandon MSN, but I can't without all my friends wondering why I don't talk to them anymore. Of course I could simply not use IM anymore to talk to these people (but as some live abroad it's not practical to phone so really I'd lose them), in much the same way that I could move to another country to avoid a company that bans my car from their roads.
These companies do have monopolies, they have monopolies on my friends IM accounts, and they knew perfectly well when they started giving this stuff away for free that this is what would happen.
I have no problem whatsoever with freeloading on their networks, I didn't want to use them in the first place, and if I need to break into their networks then I will do so (at the same time as trying to convince my friends to use Jabber).
Ad Revenue? (Score:5, Insightful)
All this is is an update to their protocal that happened to break third party messengers. I looked for a license that you could purchace ala msn and couldnt find one. I believe that they will continue to allow third party messengers into their network.
Why is it just because they upgrade something and it breaks other programs that they didn't code people call out the wolves on them? Not all companies are M$ here. On the other side, not all companies are Opensource based and fully backwards compaible. In this case, Yahoo upgraded their core protocal and in doing that broke all backwards comptability. This, in my eyes, isn't some evil plot to get people to look at ads or get license money, it's just the way they do things.
Re:nah (Score:2, Insightful)
But the question I have is this:
Is Yahoo! (and other IM servers) cutting off their own feet but blocking access to Trillian?
I use Trillian extensively, and have been doing so for two year. So do all of my friends. 55-60 people.
But if Yahoo! blocks Trillian, we'll just switch to another service. Most often I use MSN, but I can easily switch to ICQ or AOL if MSN starts blocking Trillian.
So, there's 50 users that Yahoo! lost, how many more times will this scenario be duplicated across the planet?
I think Yahoo! just made the same error other net services vendors (and the RIAA) made: They blocked usuage of their product by 'unathorized' (in their eyes) users. They are obviously hoping that people will start using Y! (or buy the CD, in the case of RIAA). But without giving the users a usable, convenient, and value-added service, users will just go someplace else. In the case of Y!, I'll drop it. CD's, I'll listen to what's on the radio, or net-cast, or listen to the MP3s I have.
They don't gain my loyalty, unless they offer a real alternative.
ex.
Y!: We don't want you to use their program for our service. It costs us money to maintain it, and when you don't use our program, we don't get any of it back.
User: But this program is easy to use, comes wit lots of neat features, and deosn't suck up a huge amount of memory or CPU cycles.
Y!: AH, but here's our new program. Y!+ for all the other features, and Y! Lite for just the bare bones. We'll even use plug-ins so you can have JUST the features you want.
User: Gee, thanks Y!. I'll use it, and be loyal forever!
Re:nah (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but if these people are using Trillian, they weren't the sort of users Yahoo! wants anyway. They were using the service, but not generating any revenue to pay for it (principally by not looking at ads). Of course, Trillian users boosted Y!'s market share, and their presence made it a more attractive choice to new users, some of whom would use the official client, see the ads and generate revenue. But Y! seems to have concluded that letting Trillian users use their network for free doesn't attract enough new users of the official client to be cost-effective; so why would they encourage it?
I think Y! know exactly what they're doing. Depending on your long-term strategy, it can be better to have forty thousand customers making you a tiny profit than forty million who cost you money.
Re:Which article did you read? (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean seriously, if you had a service you were providing for free/ad-ware, and some company added monthly costs to your bandwidth and cpu usage, and you received no money from them, yet they charged a fairly steep fee, wouldn't you be ticked off too?
BTW, Kopete has already released a fix for MSN, and both (Kopete and Gaim) are working on fixes for MSN and Yahoo! to be released soon.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
"By Product" my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
This IS an effort to block all 'non revenue' clients.
While it IS their network, and they can block whom ever they choose, I can also can choose to boycott all of yahoo! services due to them being a prick, and get everyone i know to also do so.
If they publish the new protocol, then they still get my business. Unlike another IM network who's parent wont be publishing and will work hard to force out all non native clients