Google trying to make their IM and VOIP services ubiquitous

Google has opened it's IM and Internet telephony services to any company willing to support the XMPP protocol, a standard under the control of an open-source foundation.

XMPP, or extensible messaging and presence protocol, is an XML-based protocol for passing instant messaging and presence information among servers. The protocol is under the Jabber Software Foundation.

Google said on its Web site that it's committed to taking an "open federation" approach to instant messaging and Internet telephony, which means people on its networks can communicate with anyone on a system supporting XMPP.

This is a smart move. Unfortunately until Yahoo and MSN decide to play ball and support XMPP as well, the benefits to Google users will be small. At least they still have the deal with AOL users, so you can chat away to them all you like.

More importantly, this is a natural move for Google. They have as yet the smallest number of IM users amongst the big portal players, so they need to try and spread the net as widely as possible to link up with other already established networks.

For users it would clearly be great to have IM and VOIP interoperability, but I don't see Yahoo or MSN playing ball with Google quite yet. Shame.