A Year Later, Google Talk and AIM Still Don't Interoperate

I must be psychic. This morning I was recalling that Google and AOL have long promised to integrate their instant messaging platforms. This would allow users on Google Talk to chat with their peeps who are on AOL Instant Messenger and vice versa. Low and behold, when I went to look it up I discovered that the expanded AOL-Google deal was unveiled exactly a year ago today. So what gives? Perhaps much more than what meets the eye.

Upon further review, the language in the press release is m-i-g-h-t-y curious. It states that the agreement benefits users by: "Enabling Google Talk and AIM instant messaging users to communicate with each other, provided certain conditions are met." (Italics are mine.) Hmmm, what conditions?

Could it be that Google and AOL can't get their systems to play nice? Quite possibly. But I think there's bigger things afoot here. It's also possible that AOL is not delivering the advertising value Google had hoped to earn when it plowed in a billion bucks to save it. So, maybe the IM integration is on hold. After all, why get married if the courtship is rocky? It would only upset users if they re-segregated the IM systems.

It seems a little strange that there's been no communication on this. They probably hope everyone forgot. Microsoft and Yahoo had no trouble making this happen in under a year. This leads me to believe the problem lies within the deal, not the technical. If not, hopefully they will say so. (Microsoft is an Edelman client.)

Comments

[MG Siegler]

Thank you for remembering this. I was very excited for the news when it was first announced, still pretty excited about 6 months later, then more time passed and sure enough, I forgot.

I'm with you though, I bet the hold up lies within the deal not the tech.

[Ken Yarmosh]

This is really annoying! It seems like most 20 somethings have gmail, which makes gchat a no brainer. But AIM has been a standard so long. They need to resolve their differences and allow us to commuicate across platforms.

[foos]

Just stop using GChat. I don't know why anyone uses it for anything but trying to be hip. It doesn't offer anything on top of AIM.

[Rodney]

Google uses the Jabber protocol. It's open. AOL anybody could work with Google w/o even having to talk to Google--they'd just have to adopt the open standard. Am I wrong?

[Christian]

AOL could simply map AIM accounts to screenname@aim.com in jabber(replacing the rare accounts that contain the @ symbol with %) and map jabber accounts to hostname@domain.tld for legacy AIM clients(offering those people who use a jabber address as an AIM screenname to merge their contacts or get new accounts). Then, OSCAR clients and all jabber clients can interact.

[Anonymous]

http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=dev&d2=assembly&d3=det_aolXmppGateway

[jessemoya]

I'm curious if AOL's TOS for AIM had anything to do with it. Reading through it is what made me look for something else, and GoogleTalk's looked much better in comparison.

[peter]

I founded ActiveBuddy in 2000 (With Mr. Hoffer and Kay). AB, which was recently sold to Microsoft, was intimately involved with IM. There has been NO business reason for AOL (now the shrinking AOL) to interoperate - never was. I am not saying that they shouldn't but this is reality.

IM is one of their few sticky apps. That they never figured out how to really leverage their huge (and shrinking) IM audience is pitiful.

[Sasha]

You can already use your AOL messenger to chat with GTalk and vice versa. There are solutions out there that enable this type of interoperability.

[dave j]

Now that Google has hired the former Architect of the entire AIM system, maybe he can fill them in on how it works.

[Fitch]

And lo and behold, one year later, they used the aim.com address and it works! Two years!