Does anybody remember when Yahoo had free POP email? Wasn’t that cool? I loved that. No other free email company offered POP. I remember (before I owned Qangaroo.com or JoeyDay.com) when I used to have upwards of twelve free email accounts through various portals. I was forwarding them all to Yahoo so I could use Outlook Express. Those were the days. I even had Yahoo set as my home page. I loved reading my Reuters news and getting my weather information, and I thought the Yahoo search engine was the best. I also had two Yahoo Geocities accounts.
Then Yahoo started charging $3/year for POP access. They also threatened to start charging for other services. That’s when I pulled out. I had my POP email through Qangaroo.com and didn’t care to pay anything to Yahoo to use theirs. I cancelled all of my Yahoo and Geocities accounts — except one.
The one account I kept, qangaroo
, was the one I used for Instant Messaging. I’ve since even cancelled that account, opting for a more personally identifiable one: joeynday
. Since about six months ago I’ve been using a great IM program called Trillian. It lets me log into all four of the major IM programs and it saves me from having four buddy lists cluttering up my desktop. This week, Yahoo announced (somewhat enigmatically) that they’ve taken steps to block Trillian and other third party programs from accessing the Yahoo IM network.
Here’s a ZDNet article on the subject: Yahoo freezes out Trillian
Trillian has released a patch already that fixes the problem, but no one knows just how long that will last. If Yahoo’s really trying to keep third parties out I’m sure they will come up with something permanent. If that happens I’ll simply say goodbye to Yahoo for good. I really only talk to one person over Yahoo, and she recently started using MSN Messenger, so losing Yahoo won’t be too big of a deal for me.
In a related story, Microsoft has also threatened to block third party IM services from their network. They’ve set up a contract offer for third party companies to stay connected to their network. October 15 is the slated deadline for companies to sign the deal. It will be interesting to see if Trillian will fork over the cash to keep MSN. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t.
Again, the story from ZDNet: Microsoft forces IM upgrades
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not upset about this in the least. All the IM programs are sponsored by ads across the bottom of their buddy list window. MSN, Yahoo, and AOL are no doubt losing a bit of revenue from people who switch to programs like Trillian. I don’t have any problems with those companies blocking my access to their network, but if they think that’s going to get me to use their IM program, they are mistaken. I hate to side with Microsoft, but Yahoo would probably make more money by doing what Microsoft is doing: trying to strike a contract deal with Trillian. That way, existing Trillian users don’t get ticked off and Yahoo still gets their revenue.