Remember how you couldn’t send emails to your friends who used Eudora, because you were using Pine? That’s because it never happened. That shortcoming would never fly, yet we put up with these exact bugaboos on a regular basis. I’m getting real close to dropping all IM activity altogether until the brands get their acts together. That’s likely to never happen, because we have huge egos at stake.

Chris Pirillo, responding to the release of Google Talk – yet another distinct IM universe (albeit this one is open)