Is IM interop alive?

Florian Jensen reports that AOL is testing ICQ and AIM interoperability using XMPP. If they adopt XMPP, AIM and ICQ should work with Google Talk as well, although they could of course prevent that from happening if they chose to do so.

I started blogging about the need for interoperability among instant messaging services years ago, but very little progress has been made. Still, this is a sign of hope.