I tend to be a paranoid person. I also like to keep things nice and clean, as in as few applications running as possible.Now add on that I use multiple IM clients.

Yes there are a number of different 3rd party IM clients out there to allow you to manage all the different IM protocols in one nice neat package. Trillian, Meebo, and the one I prefer Pidgin. Pidgin (formerly called GAIN) is a nice, neat, free, open source IM client that connects to just about everything. Memory cost on it is low, no ads to deal with, and it works. Well most of the time.

Yahoo, which just happens to be the one most people I IM with use, keeps changing things so that Pidgin’s Yahoo protocol keeps breaking. DNS issues, protocol issues, Yahoo keeps trying to make you use their propritary client, which serves up ads, tosses cookies on your system, and has been known to slip a few pieces of not so nice adware one a machine.

Why does Yahoo do this? They want market share, and they need money. the problem is that I don’t want more than 1 IM client open on my machine. Unfortunately, with how popular Yahoo IM is I can’t get away from it. Not if I want to be able to be in touch with the majority of my friends.

Personally, I think that Yahoo is making a big mistake on things like this. Then they wonder why people have been turning away from them.