In a blog post late Friday, the Yahoo Messenger team announced that it’s cutting several features from the instant-messaging service as part of the broader attempt to bring new focus to the company. One of the features that will be going away is interoperability with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger.
The connection between Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger was a relatively big deal when it happened back in 2006, letting users of either service connect and communicate with users of the other, but it’s not as critical in this era of pervasive social networking and Facebook messaging.
Yahoo writes in the post: “Yahoo! Messenger will no longer be interoperable with Microsoft Windows Live Messenger as of December 14, 2012. Microsoft buddies will still appear on your Messenger contact list, but they will be greyed out, and if you try to send instant messages to them, the messages will not be delivered.”
As noted by AllThingsD, the decision to end the connection between the two IM services isn’t a huge surprise, given that Microsoft is in the process shuttering Windows Live Messenger and moving users to Skype for IM and video calls. That change will take effect in the first quarter of next year.
Microsoft and Yahoo remain partners in the Internet search business, for now.
Other Yahoo Messenger features getting the axe include public chat rooms, Pingbox, and some voice calling features.
