Google May Push IM Interoperability

With Google enabling open federation for its Talk product, will other instant messaging providers open their services for users to chat with people outside of their walled gardens? Anyone can email another user on a different Internet service provider, and one mobile phone user on a network can call any other network, Google described how 'open federation' benefits users on any other openly federated IM service: This allows you to choose your service provider based on other more important factors, such as features, quality of service, and price, while still being able to talk to anyone you want. Unfortunately, the same is not true with many popular IM and VOIP networks today. If the people you want to talk to are all on different IM/VOIP services, you need to sign up for an account on each service and connect to each service to talk to them. The Google Talk network supports open interoperability with hundreds of other communications service providers through a process known as federation. Interoperability between instant messaging services has moved at a glacial pace. In October, here. Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo! My Web David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.