What are they going to achieve if they do so?.. simple thinking says, NOTHING. This deal is not yet ON. It would take next year first quarter to get this UP and running. Why did they announce it soo early?.. These guys are definitely panicked by the Google stuff and its prospect of having a stake in the AOL(that means GTalk! becomes interoperable with AOL Messenger).
This means the future instant messaging communities would ally with a consortium and not essentially with a provider. What on earth stops Yahoo! and MSN to do Jabber Open Protocol?
Evil. Evil. The IM area is getting heated up.