Messenger, the Messiah …

It looks like the Messenger arena is getting hot and competition is getting intense. Google has launched its Messenger service “Google Talk” and poses a direct threat to MSN Messenger, AOL and Yahoo IM.

Google cannot help it. It’s a logical extension. Messenger has more network effects than Mail. It’s like our Indian Marriages. If you love a girl from other religion, either you have to convert to her religion or she has to come to your religion. From my experience, I know of other case where the pair just splits instead of going thru the hassles of this religion conversion. Anyway, this case and the arguments that nobody cares about religion nowadays (Proof: ‘sex’ is searched more than ‘religion’ in any search engine :) ) are unrelated to the topic.

Companies such as MSN and Yahoo do the same and have kept their Messenger communities closed cautiously. If you want to date a girl with MSN Id, boy, give up your Yahoo and register with MSN. (If you have girl friends in both, just open both the chats simultaneously. Fortunately, one friend will not know that you are chatting with another friend. I don’t want to get into arguments that some girls have mystical powers to find out this) If Messenger service was open, Google would have had a great advantage now in competing against established players. Yahoo and MSN knew it and shut their door.

Think what would have happened if Hotmail kept its mail closed. There’s a lengthy argument which finally concludes that that wouldn’t have been a wise idea but the Messenger arena is different. Yahoo had a clear first big (free) mover advantage and MSN had the clear MS advantage. It looks like Google might become open but we have to wait to see the impact.

Messenger may even replace the mail services in the future. Even now there are a lot of friends who send me offline messages but who have never written a mail. Mails may become a formal medium and become what snail mails are today. You would use mail to write to your neighbor that his loud speaker is disturbing you and later submit that mail as a proof in the court. Or your boss might think offline messages are insult to him and would like to send only mails.

The feature that is lacking today is a better interface to manage offline messages. Think of a situation when I receive hundred offline messages!! Or a utility to connect Messenger to the mail clients to organize the offline messages that we want to maintain. I don’t know whether these are already available but if not, my guess is they would soon be available.