Introduction

There are manythird-party instant messaging clients that have the capability to connect to multiple services suchas AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), Yahoo! and MSN without needing to install the service s dedicatedclients. Trillian, available at http://trillian.cc, is one of the most popularof these clients for Windows-based workstations, and is full featured and includes the feature offree, built-in encryption for messaging sessions. As of August 2005, Trillian has been downloaded23,982,735 times according to CNet s Download.com (http://download.com).

Google Talk is a fairly basic instant messaging client. At the time of this writing, GoogleTalk s features are minimal compared to competitors, with none of the advanced tools that are nowstandard on other competing clients such as file transfers, video conferencing, or integration withportal features. Google Talk handles only two functions, text messaging and voice over IP (VoIP).This instant messaging client is in beta (as of September 2005) and its features and architecturemay change before it reaches its finalized version. This instant messaging client is interestingbecause of Google s huge popularity and the fact that a GMail account is required to access GoogleTalk. The popularity of GMail may translate into millions of users for Google s instant messagingclient.

Web-based clients are not very popular due to their limited feature set. These clients areoften used only when a user is unable to install a full-featured client on a system, possibly dueto restrictions on a workstation. These clients are usually capable of very limited functionality,such as sending text messages. Web-based clients can present a unique security issue whererestrictions on software...