Re:It'll never happen with the big guys (Score 1)

Let's wake up and smell the money. AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! won't integrate simply because a whole lot of ad revenue would be lost as a result. AOL doesn't give a hooha about being the inventors of instant messaging in its popular form (although they are). They don't let other messaging services on their network because AOL is the one that paid to build that network and AOL is the one who has to pay to maintain it. Even if they ignored the costs that they would be paying for other providers to use these networks how could they ignore all of the ad revenue that they would lose by allowing MSN or Yahoo! to use the AOL IM network just to increase their own profits?

Let's face it, MSN, AOL and Yahoo! are for profit businesses. Microsoft calls for integration simply because it stands to gain more ad revenue for itself if MSN is allowed to leech off of AOL. If Microsoft had a network like AOL does for their MSN client there would be no alternative IM clients (like gaim and trillion) because we all know that Microsoft puts every effort into monoplizing everything that they're involved with and IM would be no different. Integration at this point in the history of instant messaging stands only to help Microsoft whose MSN service lacks in comparison to AOL. And we all know that helping Microsoft only hurts everyone else in the world (including their customers). If Microsoft ever gets a firm grasp on IM (which they would if AOL allowed them to integrate) then we would soon find instant messaging dominated by MSN who would bar any alternative clients from accessing their network and you can bet that IM would no longer be a free.