Google hires lead developer for open source instant messenger, Gaim

October 13, 2005 Google recently hired Sean Egan, the lead developer of Gaim, an open source instant messenger, in an apparent bid to improve their Google Talk messenger's interoperability. The news follows a recent announcement by Microsoft and Yahoo that the two companies plan to allow their instant messengers to interoperate. Google Talk is based on Jabber technology, which is an open standard which any instant messenger can be programmed to interoperate with. The Gaim instant messaging client, as of the most recent version (1.5.0), can communicate on AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks. Gaim is cross-platform, with versions available for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows.