It happened again yesterday. Trillian, a popular "all-in-one" IM client was shut out of Yahoo's network (to be fair, all 3rd party clients were shut out). This isn't a new problem for Trillian, in fact, it was AOL's similar maneuver two and a half years ago that inspired us to create BitWise. Then, AOL and Trillian shared 3 or 4 rounds of the cat and mouse game, where AOL would make a change to block Trillian, and 1-4 days later, Trillian would issue a patch to allow connecting to the AIM network again. This time around, it didn't take the Trillian programmers very long at all--it was fixed today.
What seems to have everyone up in arms, besides the fact that they coludn't connect to Yahoo through Trilllian ("I paid for this 3rd party access, and now Yahoo is denying me access" said one frustrated Trillian Pro user; I have no sympathy, it's your fault you paid for 3rd party access), is the reason that Yahoo gave. Yahoo claims that blocking 3rd party access will prevent SPIM (spam in the form of IM). Perhaps it will. However, most people are asserting that Yahoo's true reason is the advertising impressions that they lose when people use a 3rd party client. No Yahoo client, no ads, no payment from advertisers. In reality, I suspect it was a combination of both.
Some people have sworn off Yahoo as a result--that if they can't connect with Trillian, they won't connect with the official Yahoo client either. I doubt Yahoo cares much about that, since they weren't getting any money from those users anyway (no ads seen, no money from advertisers). Maybe that means some of their friends will migrate elsewhere, but who knows.
There's something really fundamental people are missing here. If everyone connected to Yahoo with Trillian, and Yahoo received $0 in advertising, guess what would happen to the public Yahoo IM network? Simply stated, it's expensive to run an IM service (I know, and BitWise is a small one!). Yahoo must pay the bills somehow, and it's certainly not from people buying Yahoo Messenger! They need their advertising revenue to support the service.
People expect way too much for free. Free standalone software is one thing: there's not much cost associated with it. With a network-based service, however, there's the cost of servers, bandwidth, IT staff 24/7, etc. To expect that for free is simply naive. Sure, it's been "free" for a long time now, but it's supported by advertising. Take away the advertising, and it can't be free anymore.
So unless you're ready to start paying for your IM access with Yahoo, be prepared to use their client. The cat will eventually win against the mouse, even if it takes a lawsuit or something else equally drastic. When will it happen? I don't know, but I think it will.
Frankly, this little war pleases me. With BitWise, there's no 3rd party to worry about, no lost advertising revenue to worry about, and no time lost fighting these silly wars. BitWise is free and has no ads because it is supported by paying business clients and by generous donations from home users. That's how it has been and that's how it will be. Don't play games, it's too much aggravation. Not to mention, we've already saved you the effort of writing your own network. :)