Another IM client! w00t! This is awesome! It’s getting to the point where every person on the planet could have their own IM client and I wouldn’t be able to instant message any of ‘em because of interoperability issues! Instead of helping the problem, Google’s actually hurting it right now. Oh sure, they’re using Jabber - an open standard - but what about everybody else? Until Yahoo!, MSN, Skype, ICQ, and AIM hop onto Jabber, this is just another stupid IM client that’s not doing anything any more useful than any other IM client. Oh wait, just because it’s from Google makes it good? I don’t buy that. This is just getting stupid. Pure, unadulterated stupid. These companies honestly expect us to run… let me count ‘em up here… six separate instant messaging applications on our desktop just so we can stay in touch with all of our friends and their choice of brand? STOP! PLEASE STOP!!!

It’s like I wrote in CPU Magazine a few months ago… Most (if not all) of my friends are online, and most (if not all) of my friends have an Instant Messaging handle. As such, I have to keep AOL’s Instant Messenger (inarguably, the ugliest IM client on the planet), Yahoo!’s Instant Messenger, Microsoft’s Instant Messenger, AOL’s other Instant Messenger (ICQ), Jabber, Google’s Hello, and now Skype… all within arm’s reach. It’s irritating, to say the least. Each one of these companies should be hanging their heads in shame. Their marketing staff are undoubtedly to blame for this IM inter-inoperability fiasco. One program might be able to talk to another, but that’s not good enough - every single one of these IM divisions aren’t competing properly. Do these suits actually believe that all of my friends are only using their brand? INCONCEIVABLE!

Remember how you couldn’t send emails to your friends who used Eudora, because you were using Pine? That’s because it never happened. That shortcoming would never fly, yet we put up with these exact bugaboos on a regular basis. I’m getting real close to dropping all IM activity altogether until the brands get their acts together. That’s likely to never happen, because we have huge egos at stake. With a straight face, you can’t tell me that THIS emoticon is any better than THAT emoticon. Next, you’re going to tell me that I can’t use THIS keyboard to type characters onto THAT screen?! Gimme a break - this is getting old, quick.