AOL Allows Google Accounts to Cross-Connect with Gmail!

AOL and ICQ were the doyens of online chatting. Text based chatting quickly attracted a community. Suddenly people could communicate with friends and family cheaply and in real-time. AOL was the rising ISP in those days and their Instant Messengers was the place to be.

Today, the case is different and Google, MSN and to a lesser extent Yahoo, dominate the online messaging market. Facebook is also gaining momentum in this niche.

Enable Chatting with AIM buddies on Gmail!

• If you visit your Gmail page, it shows  an option to add AOL users directly into chat.
• Just add a contact into chat contacts list directly in the format “[email protected]”.
• The difference here is that to add AOL contacts you do not need to have a AOL account yourself. 😉

We cannot chat with contacts from one service to another unless we have an account. For example I cannot chat with my Facebook friends on Gmail without signing up with Facebook.

This is very strange when compared to email. We can send emails from one service provider to another without any trouble.

AOL has done the right thing!

AOL has done the right thing, by allowing Gmail users to chat with AOL users directly without the need to sign-up with AOL. This is possibly an admission on AOL’s part that it is not the dominant force it was once when it came to internet communication.

With offline messages, chat sometimes is often used as replacement for short emails.

What are you views on instant messaging? Do you think anyone from any account should be able to add each other like they do with email now? Do drop in your comments.

Source: Gmail Blog