Earlier this week came widespread reports that Microsoft would be retiring its widely used Messenger service on March 15th, forcing all users (apart from those in China) to switch to using Skype for instant messaging.
This information came from an e-mail that Microsoft has started sending to Messenger users (though not yet all of them; I’ve still not received it) informing them of the need to switch from the current Messenger client to the new Skype client in order to keep chatting to their friends.
This presented an immediate problem. What about all the people—and there are many of them—not using the regular, official, Messenger client for Windows? For example, Windows Phone integrates Messenger chat into its messaging hub, but can’t communicate with the Skype network at all. As much as I’d like to see Microsoft roll out an update for both Windows Phone 7 and 8 to add Skype support to the messaging hub in the next two months, it’s highly unlikely.
Similarly, the Xbox has two integration points with Messenger. With the ChatPad accessory, Xbox users can send instant messages to Messenger users; with Kinect, they can also video chat.
There’s also numerous third-party clients. Messenger offers two protocols that third parties integrate with. Messenger has its own proprietary protocol named MSP and in December 2011 Microsoft added support for the open XMPP messaging protocol. Third-party clients such as Pidgin, Adium, Digsby, and Trillian use one or the other of these protocols to allow chat with Messenger users.
These clients all connect to the Messenger service. If Microsoft were truly to retire the Messenger service on March 15th, all these clients would instantly cease working.
We asked Microsoft about its plans and what would happen to these various clients. The company tells us that contrary to the previous reports, the Messenger service isn’t being retired on March 15th. That date does represent the start of the transition away from Messenger, but the service is set to operate for some time yet.
On March 15th, the Windows Messenger client will be blacklisted and unable to connect to the network, informing users that they must install the Skype client instead. The Skype client will continue to connect to the Messenger network (as it does presently) and will allow communication with Messenger users.
We’re not sure at present if the Metro client bundled with Windows 8 will be affected, but the desktop client certainly will be. If the Metro client is affected then it will make for a very poor user experience; an app bundled with Windows 8 and prominently positioned on the default Start screen will be rendered useless and inoperable until upgraded or replaced.
Other clients, however, should be unaffected and will continue to connect just fine. The one exception is Kinect-based video chat on the Xbox; Microsoft says that that too will cease working when the desktop client is retired. This includes both official clients, such as the one built in to Windows Phone, and third-party software. Users of these clients will be able to chat seamlessly with Windows users using the Skype client.
In October 2013, Microsoft will turn off its XMPP support. Third-party clients depending on this protocol will stop working at this time.
The network itself will continue running until March 2014. At this point, MSP support will be turned off, and it’s likely that the current Windows Phone and Xbox clients will at this point stop working. However, it’s far enough in the future that Microsoft has time to develop and deploy new clients for phone and console users.
Behind the scenes, Microsoft has been integrating much of the infrastructure and using Messenger’s servers and systems for Skype’s instant messaging features.
For users of third-party clients, this is somewhat good news. If the service had truly been turned off come March 15th, these clients would stop working in just over two months. Users of these clients now have a little more breathing room before they’ll have to switch to an official client.
The news is less good for users of the official client. For instant messaging functionality, the Skype client is not the best thing going. It lacks any good equivalent to the tabbed chat windows that Messenger (and virtually every other instant messaging client) sports, and its support for media sharing is inferior to Messenger’s.
In related news, the Skype client was updated to version 6.1 on Thursday, with the big feature being integration into Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 to enable calls to be made directly from within Microsoft’s groupware client.

via Microsoft Messenger Service not going anywhere just yet | Ars Technica.