Israeli venture capitalist Yossi Vardi, who founded the famed ICQ instant message service later bought by America Online, decided to poke fun at it.

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Microsoft says it will use the company's software, people and intellectual property to accelerate the delivery of its unified communications vision, a vision bringing together various technologies including e-mail, instant messaging, short message service, telephony, and Web conferencing.

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Facebook's service is designed to combine traditional email, instant message and cellphone text messages into one system, routing messages to whichever service is best for each person, and keeping an archive of it all.

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"I would never want a company to send me an instant message advertisement and as soon as that started I would instantly log off and never use the service again, " he says.

BBC: Messaging in an instant