I use instant messaging a lot. I have accounts on Yahoo!, ICQ, AOL/iChat, MSN and Jabber. I use two clients: iChat AV (because it allows me to do high quality video conferencing with other Mac users) and Proteus, a muli-protocol IM client.

I don't have all these accounts because it's cool, I do because there's people I work with that use these different protocols and thanks to my multi-protocol client this was not a problem. Until now.

Recently Yahoo and MSN have announced "improvements" in their services which apparently will not allow third party clients to connect to their servers. Yesterday my Yahoo account stopped working with Proteus.

I read several posts on Scoble's blog about Microsoft's infrastructure costs, and why they are doing this. I do understand the problem, I don't like the solution.

I am a power user. I have a powerful machine with a pretty large 1600x1200 screen. Still, this is how my screen would look like with all IM clients open:



See? No more room to work.

Frankly I don't think that this is about privacy or safety. I don't even think that Microsoft or Yahoo care particulary about pushing a banner which I will never click from time to time to my client.

It's not about money. I would pay for my account to be able to use the client I prefer, but I have not even been offered this option.

It's about marketshare.

Since most users will not be allowed to use several clients, they hope to force customers to move to one service. If I'm a MSN (or Yahoo, or AOL) user, I will ask people I work with to move to MSN to be able to communicate with me.

In other words, they are trying to drive the market by controlling protocols.

Meanwhile they are breaking the system and making our life miserable, but they don't care. The IM war has started and we are all prisoners.