It's amazing how some people can get so riled over a simple comment.
Well if it came from a literary genius I would have been more gracious about it.
As for Betamax VCRs, yes it would cost a hell of alot to reintroduce it. But think back to why Beta died...
Betamax was technically superior, to and was introduced before, VHS but in the time-honoured Japanese way of marketing things, JVC nailed Sony by flooding the market with VHS machines and ran at a loss for years to make sure VHS overtook Beta. JVC also managed to pick up some more licencees than Sony did, which added weight to their push for dominance.
The same (more or less) is happening here. IRC has been around for around 15 years or so and messengers are comparitivly newer. Online content providers like MSN are spending money on software development and the huge expense of running servers for the millions of messenger users to log into. How they justify such an extravaganza from a business point of view is another matter.
Quite clearly though, messenger providers are spending alot of money on hammering IRC for all it's worth and for the time being and for what ever reason, they are succeeding.
