14 DAY TRIAL // The Yahoo! Instant Messenger 9.0 Beta that was rolled out on Tuesday was well received by the users and that was to be expected. Its user base grew 19% over the last year and that is the best news for Yahoo! that was to be had, now with the announced closing of Yahoo! 360. It is likely to play a central role in linking up the company's various web services, much in the same manner Microsoft relies heavily on Windows Live Messenger, pointing users to Spaces, search and many more.
Some more good news for Yahoo! is that with the rise in its popularity in the US, it is close to ending AOL's reign of supremacy on the local market. Or at least it has the best shot at it in a decade. AIM and ICQ, both owned by AOL have been the big-bad wolves for Yahoo!'s and Microsoft's own Instant Messengers, but they looked less and less scary every year because of the dial-up business collapse that left AIM largely stagnant. AOL's figures for last year showed an increase in instant messenger users of only 2 percent that brought its user base to 30.2 million, according to comScore. Yahoo!, with its rise came to a total of 27.7 million users I September in the US. Worldwide, Yahoo saw a 30% growth to 94.3 million users, attributable to the new languages of its software.
"AOL isn't backing away from the fight and has renewed its focus on AIM after a couple years of testing the waters with its Triton client. AIM version 6.5 - released earlier this month - introduced a modern user interface, tabbed message windows, text messaging and buddy status messages. While it has failed to expand much internationally, AOL has been able to retain the lead at home, which gives it a leg up against competitors - even if AIM's a little late to the party.", according to Nate Mook of BetaNews. Under the "Latest Updates" category, it seems that Yahoo has released yesterday an update to the latest 9.0 Beta version of its messenger that allows unlimited file transfer, according to the people at ComputerWire. The previous limitation was set at 2 GB file size, so the increase is? substantial, to say the least.