In what The Wall Street Journal is called “a competitive realignment of the heated Internet industry,” Yahoo and Microsoft will allow consumers using free communications services — including instant messaging and computer-to-computer voice calling — to communicate directly with each other. The Journal reports that the alliance would challenge the leading instant-messaging market share of America Online. AOL has long resisted letting users of other instant-messaging services connect with its own. Read more.
–A. Jahnke
