There was a time when geeks were the only ones who used instant messengers. Not so now. Almost everyone, from high school students to Congressmen, have instant messaging accounts. Businesses use instant messengers like Lotus Sametime or Novell GroupWise within their companies. How did instant messengers get this far?

In the beginning…

One of the first chatting protocols was a chat room network protocol known as Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. IRC was started in Finland in 1988 by Jarkko “WiZ” Oikarinen. Although there were other chat room protocols available, IRC gained popularity during the Soviet Coup of 1991, when a group of Soviet government leaders attempted to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. While doing this, there was a media blackout. During this blackout, IRC was the only way to know what was happening in the Soviet Union until order was restored. Following the blackout, people started using IRC for other matters, such as technical support chat rooms.

The “Big Four” and Jabber

Today, things have come a long way from IRC. Nowadays, there are four major instant messaging clients known as the “Big Four” (ICQ, AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger). They support features such as microphones, webcams, file transfers, skins, and much more. Each have their own protocols (though some work with each other). But the Big Four aren’t the only options for instant messaging. There’s also a VoIP client that thinks it is a chatting program, an open protocol with many of its own clients, and Google’s approach.

ICQ: The mother of them all

In 1996, the first major peer-to-peer instant messenger was born. Four Israelis, Yair Goldfinger, Arik Vardi, Sefi Vigiser and Amnon Amir, came together to form a company called Mirabilis. Their first product was a program called ICQ, a play on the phrase “I Seek You”. Unlike IRC, ICQ took the approach of letting users connect directly to each other through servers, instead of being forced to use a chat room. This novel idea quickly became popular. Soon, big companies started paying attention. One of these was America Online. In 1998, they announced that they had acquired Mirabilis for the sum of US$240 million. In 2002, AOL Time Warner announced that ICQ had received a United States patent for instant messaging. But ICQ was doomed for failure. Since many people already had AOL screen names, they were more inclined to use AIM then ICQ. Also, by this time, Yahoo! and Microsoft had announced their own instant messengers, drawing users from their own extensive user bases. ICQ started losing market share quickly. By 2006, they had only 4 million active users (compared to Windows Live Messenger’s 27.2 million, this is a tiny amount).

ICQ was the first. Does that mean it is the best? It has quite a few cool features, such as multi-user chats, SMS messaging, file transfers, games, and audio and video chat. However, there are quite a few downsides to ICQ. First of all, ICQ is stuck with extremely annoying ads, making the interface extremely cluttered. In addition, only Windows users can use the latest official client (6.0). Mac users are stuck with version 3.4.23, while GNU/Linux users don’t even have an official client.

• ICQ Homepage

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM): One of the more popular

When ICQ started taking off, people were starting to realize that there was a market for instant messengers. America Online (also known as AOL) was one of these. In 1997, they announced the release of the AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM. Like ICQ, AIM quickly took off. In 1998, AOL announced the acquisition of ICQ, giving them a huge market share in the instant messenger market. In 2003, that share went even higher after Apple Inc. (then Apple Computer) announced iChat AV, a new instant messenger program that would be included in Macintosh OS X 10.3 and using AIM’s OSCAR protocol. And in 2006, AOL announced that users of AIM could now receive calls from landline phones for free using AOL’s AIM Phoneline.

So is AIM worth using? Actually, it is probably the instant messenger that users will want to stay away from the most. It has even more ads than the rest of the Big Four clients. Even worse, it bundles software that users don’t necessarily want and can’t always get rid of, such as the Viewpoint Media Player (which sends usage information to Viewpoint), the Plaxo Address Book (which at one time spammed its users), and Wild Tangent software (labeled by some security applications as spyware). Plus, it tries to change the user’s browser homepage and add desktop icons to things that people don’t need. Additionally, the Mac and GNU/Linux versions are outdated. All in all, a very unenjoyable experience.

• AIM Homepage

Yahoo! Messenger: Yahoo! joins in the fun

The same year AOL bought ICQ, Yahoo! announced the release of Yahoo! Pager (soon to be renamed to Yahoo! Messenger). Since Yahoo! already had a lot of users, it wasn’t long before AOL began to realize that they didn’t have the corner on the market that they thought they did. Soon, Yahoo! Messenger was a huge rival to AIM.

Yahoo! Messenger helped even the instant messenger playing field. Unfortunately, today’s version of Yahoo! Messenger is crippled with numerous annoyances. Like AIM, it tries to install extra software that users don’t need (like the Yahoo! Toolbar), and tries to change the user’s browser homepage to http://www.yahoo.com/. It is also hampered by its annoying ads. It does have some nice features like interoperability with Windows Live Messenger. However, like ICQ, it is also short on platform support (the Macintosh and GNU/Linux versions don’t even have microphone support).

• Yahoo! Messenger Homepage
• GYachI (unofficial Yahoo! Messenger clone for GNU/Linux) Homepage

Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) and Windows Messenger

(Microsoft decided that “if Yahoo! and AOL can do it, we can too”.)

Now the instant messenger wars were on in earnest. And Microsoft didn’t help calm them. In 1999, they announced the release of MSN Messenger, using the .NET Messenger Service protocol (again, a proprietary protocol). In 2000, Microsoft announced some groundbreaking features. Version 3 of MSN Messenger offered VoIP support. Now, users could call anyone who had MSN Messenger (a feature not many other instant messengers included). They could also call landlines for a fee using Net2Phone. Then, in 2001, Microsoft announced that they would bundle Windows Messenger, a MSN Messenger-compatible program, with Windows XP. In 2006, Microsoft re-named MSN Messenger “Windows Live Messenger”, following the re-branding of most of their MSN products to their new Windows Live product line.

Microsoft has a huge advantage over their competitors since every single copy of Windows XP sold comes with Windows Messenger. Therefore, every Windows XP user can chat using the .NET Messenger Service protocol. Unfortunately, Windows Live Messenger struggles from much the same problems that Yahoo! does: platform support. There’s no GNU/Linux version, and the OS X version doesn’t support key features like audio/video chatting. The cluttered interface doesn’t help either.

• Windows Live Messenger Homepage
• aMSN (unofficial Windows Live Messenger clone for Windows, Macintosh, FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux) Homepage

Jabber: Finally, an open protocol

The year 2000 marked a new milestone: an open protocol. There were several unique characteristics about this particular protocol. Unlike the other protocols, Jabber was free software. It also had the idea of de-centeralizing the servers by allowing anyone to host their own server. Additionally, Jabber let its users connect to almost any protocol via transports, so users could use a Jabber client to chat with users using AIM. Finally, Jabber didn’t offer an official Jabber client, opening the field for numerous new instant messengers. These all combined to make Jabber a viable alternative to the Big Four’s protocols.