IM Clients "Can't we all get along."

We are in the year 2008. It is time for I.M. to step up and standardize. I.M. will never become and standard as telephone, email, text, cell, etc, unless they adopt an open platform and stop this proprietary domination. All the companies have there own little features that make them stand out, they should and that is great to keep the edge on the market, but we need the ability to choose which client we want to use and them be able to talk to all instead of having 4 I.M.client on our m machines. It is 2008 our goal should be to move forward in technology and not backward.