The variance in attitudes between the old guard (Microsoft and Yahoo) and the Web 2.0 crowd (Google and Skype) is intriguing. AOL’s response is interesting as well. Check out this quote from Saunders .LOG:

Carl asks for 18 month predictions.  Microsoft and Yahoo! predict very little big changes.  It’s too short a time.  Skype says “Wow… 18 months is a long time”, and predicts a lot of changes, especially in making this stuff more accessible to more consumers.  He sees a large scale shift in consumers, making it more a part of every day life.  Google says on integration and interop, expect big changes.  That’s the stuff we can control.  AOL’s Ragui Kamel gives the best answer, with five things we can expect:

1. Great interworking, more openness
2. More open platform, more third party developers
3. A greater move toward nomadic use of the network.
4. An integration of IM, and voice into Applications.
5. We’ll all be sitting on a panel at VON2

My take?  This is a far more compelling articulation of vision than I’ve seen in the last couple of sessions like this.  It’s nice to see these guys finally articulate an application-centric vision, in varying degrees.  Kudos to Carl for a great job managing the session.  The one fly in the ointment?  The gulag model (sorry… walled garden) for networks is still in play. 

Another question, about enterprise utilization of I.M. services, reveals something interesting.  Yahoo says that the usage of the Yahoo I.M. network spikes during business hours. Well, doy. But wouldn’t you think these guys would want to do more to get I.M. integrated into corporate messaging systems and PBXs? Thus far, efforts to this end seem to have been minimal:

Another audience question is about enterprise use.  What are the enterprise plans for each of these vendors?  Jeff Bonforte jumps in and notes that his usage spikes during 9 to 5 in every market. We saw that a few weeks ago in the Cornell study of Skype usage that was released also.  Both Microsoft’s Dan Casey, and AOLs Ragui Kamel note that their companies have business offerings.  The AOL offering includes encryption, which I wasn’t aware of.

Check out the rest of Alec’s post.