There have even been talks about creating an open standard for instant-messaging, based on Jabber. However, the instant-messenging market is too “factionalized” (if that’s the word I’m looking for) to accept such a standard. Again, why switch if all your users are already on one of the major networks? So far, the only IM client I know of, that really uses Jabber, is Google’s gTalk. (Trillian and other IM clients can use Jabber)

Recently, Microsoft and Yahoo! have talked about joining hands. I will be very surprised if this happens. Why? Money. Ad-revenue is the big thing on the Internet nowadays, and you can bet Microsoft and Yahoo! both make a lot from the ads served up in their respective IM clients. Allowing compatibility would remove the incentive to switch, and thus, potentially decrease their ad-revenue. Unless some sort of ad-revenue sharing agreement can be reached, I don’t see this happening.