Three VoIM standards are two too many

As if the world wasn't having enough trouble dealing with VoIP, here comes VoIM--voice over instant message. It's not really new, of course: Apple's iChat crowd has been doing it for years, and so have customers of AOL, MSN and Google. But what is news is that there are increasing hints of interoperability. Google claims that Jabber, which underpins Google Talk and iChat, is a true industry standard, blessed by the IETF and everything. Yahoo and MSN are claiming their systems as standards, too, which helps no one because three competing standards are two too many to base an industry on. However, there are whispers of détente, which would make the VoIM business an interesting place to be, indeed--as long as it's not swamped by other more mature technologies.

For more information about VoIM:
- read this article from IT Business Edge