Hubert Chathi

Apparently, both AOL/ICQ and Yahoo! have been doing some stuff with Jabber/XMPP. It seems that AOL has set up a test server so that you can log into AIM/ICQ with a Jabber client (Jabber Wiki instructions). It's just a small test server, so it may not work all the time (I haven't been able to log in yet), but it is a positive sign. Who knows? Maybe by next year, AOL will federate, meaning that AIM/ICQ users will be able to chat seamlessly with any Jabber user. That includes Google Talk, Live Journal, etc. That means that we'll be one step closer to having one single instant messaging network, instead of ... well, over 10.

The most common analogy people use is the email network. You can send an email from GMail, to Hotmail, or AOL, or Yahoo!, or any other network, without any problems (modulo spam filtering, etc.) But you can't chat from Google Talk, to MSN, or AIM, or ICQ, or YIM. If all the networks used Jabber and allowed federating, like Google does, then we would be able to chat between the networks.

AOL is, surprisingly, becoming more open to open standards recently. First, they're trying out OpenID (although it seems that ICQ accounts don't have an OpenID), and now Jabber. Or perhaps, it's not too surprising. AOL used to be the big boy on the Internet, but they're losing market share. Perhaps they're hoping that embracing open standards will help them regain some position. I hope that they do, so that they can set the example for others.

Yahoo! is also experimenting with Jabber, but in this case, they're just using it to power their chatrooms at their live.yahoo.com site. This means that they're much farther away from using Jabber for their instant messaging service. But it's still encouraging.

It makes sense to use an open protocol, rather than invent your own. There are many already-built tools that you can use, rather than having to write everything from scratch.