Google and AOL were able to restore the inoperability between their two instant messenger clients, over two weeks after a spam flood on AIM began to affected Gmail Chat and Google Talk.
AOL initially thought that the repairs would be finished last Thursday, but things took a bit longer, and service was back up Tuesday. Interoperability between the IM clients is up again, and “running smoothly,” according to AOL. Meaning, users can again log into the Google network, and chat with users who are logged into the AIM network. When there was a problem, users would have to log into separate accounts to access both services.
AOL has been planning layoffs of late, with the AIM department taking hits. AIM brings in about $50 million in annual revenue, but costs about half as much to operate. AOL seeks to cut these operating cost dramatically, to about $2 to $3 million a year.
It has been reported that AOL will keep its support staff to maintain existing iterations of AIM, but the chat client software won’t be upgraded again.