In the 00s, we had multi-IM clients like Trillian, Gaim/Pidgin/libpurple, Kopete, Telepathy, etc.
Now, there's so little work done in reverse-engineering IM protocols. It's really sad. Part of this is because Sean Egan got hired by Google to work on Hangouts, so he's out of the reverse-engineering game for good, and it's sad that nobody took up the mantle from him.
Depends... in eastern-ish Europe it was ICQ only. That was kind of fine.
What I don't get is why mobile carriers still charge for SMS. They could have all deployed their own SMS apps with ads/premium where you could write messages for free. Some did that, but rather badly I think. They just let that market go.
Now, there's so little work done in reverse-engineering IM protocols. It's really sad. Part of this is because Sean Egan got hired by Google to work on Hangouts, so he's out of the reverse-engineering game for good, and it's sad that nobody took up the mantle from him.