ADN

SEATTLE -- Sources say Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to make their instant-messaging programs work together.

It's a deal that would make it easier for people to send instant messages to one another and, at the same time, make it more difficult for America Online to stay atop the IM market.

The deal is expected to be announced Wenesday. If the deal comes to pass, the Yahoo-Microsoft partnership would let users of the competing services exchange messages, something that wasn't possible before.

It would also give the two companies nearly as many users combined as AOL has in total.

AOL's AIM had more than 50 million U.S. users at last count, compared with about 27 million for Microsoft's MSN Messenger and nearly 22 million for Yahoo's Messenger.

I just don't understand the fascination with AIM man...I have it, and it is OK...But it flat out stinks in comparison to MSN...And I just fucking hate that EVERY name in the world is already registerd with AOL...And with Messenger Plus, there really isn't a need to have another client running IMO...This is good news to me though, cause I have lots of peeps on Yahoo, and we can chit chat via MSN now...

w00t!

Most of my contacts are on Yahoo, but I do have a few on MSN, so it'll be nice to be able to combine them so I don't have to have both of them open at the same time. It has gotten kinda confusing at times! LOL

Thats quite interesting as there are few contacts on my msn list who actually have a [email protected] ID. I dont really know how it works but it should become better for msn and yahoo users who have friends on both of networks.

Even though the compainies will be developing their products together, its still an "official" client, and only handles those two networks. I'd go with GAIM or Messenger Plus!, if possible.. but if your lazy like me, then this is great..! /:D" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt=":D" />

My MSN name is @yahoo.com. This is really nice. I wish that AOL would join in also so you can only use one program to talk to eveyone

There are a few messengers out there that let u sign into multiple networks all at the same time but ofcourse they are not as advanced and as good as msn or yahoo the last time I checked.