Microsoft Opens Live Messenger to All; Standalone or Built Into Any Device

Wow, they’re really taking this whole “we’re a software company’ thing to the extreme as now Live Messenger is accessible to all. As we know, Windows Phones have Messenger built into the text/messaging client and that’s exclusive to the Windows Phone experience. Or it was at least:

Today we’re taking another step, with the public availability of access to the Messenger network via XMPP, an open standard. This means that anyone can build innovative messaging clients—either stand-alone or built into their devices—that include access to Messenger’s 300 million active users.

This builds on our perspective that you should simply be able to:

• Choose the services you want, without re-spamming your friends with invites—More than 300 million people actively use Messenger every month. The vast majority of them also actively use other services like Facebook and Yahoo, where they have contact lists that they build and deepen every day. Because of this, we’ve steadily connected Messenger to other services, so that your Windows PC, Windows Phone, and Hotmail make it easy to sign in to your existing services and chat with who you want, without having to re-spam all your friends and force them to join yet another network.
• Choose the devices you want, without having to switch services—Similarly, Messenger has been available for many years on a wide range of devices, using apps built both by Microsoft and through our broad partner program. In addition to the classic Messenger desktop programs for the PC and Mac, Messenger clients are available for most mobile phones and mobile operators around the world, including Windows Phone 7, iPhone, Android, Blackberry OS, Nokia Symbian, Samsung Bada, and many more.

So Microsoft is looking for ubiquity here and they want it to be their service. With information comes power…and a place to serve ads and get information (a la Google). I’m still working this through my head. I mean, this is the same Microsoft we all know but they’re clearly made a huge shift over the past month to get their software onto other platforms…speechless for now.