SAN FRANCISCO (CNN/Money) - Yahoo!-watchers received a tantalizing tidbit last week: The company conducted an online survey that read, "Yahoo! Messenger is considering introducing a new service that would allow you to use Yahoo! Messenger to communicate with users of other instant messaging services such as AOL, MSN, or ICQ."

The survey continued, "This premium Messenger service as described above would be offered along with the current free Messenger features for a small and appropriate fee."

What's significant is that Yahoo! is polling its numerous users on their willingness to pay for what has long been seen as the IM holy grail: interoperability with the other major players.

Interoperability -- which would let Yahoo! Messenger exchange messages with AOL's Instant Messenger, for example -- has been an issue ever since more than one player existed in the space. Lawsuits have been filed to prevent unsanctioned interoperability, and even the federal government tried to move things along; one condition of the AOL Time Warner (AOL: Research, Estimates) merger was that if the combined media entity wanted to add video and audio to its IM product, that product would have to operate across platforms. AOL Time Warner is the corporate parent of this Web site.

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Though no representative of AOL, Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates), or Yahoo! (YHOO: Research, Estimates) would confirm it directly, my sources say that the companies are in negotiations to bring about interoperability. And the fact that Yahoo! is surveying its users makes it seem like the goal is not far off.

According to News.com, in March 2002, Yahoo! asked users about their interest in paying for video and audio content, and a year later the service launched. A Yahoo! spokesperson denied the inevitability of interoperability as a result of the survey, citing past instances where surveys did not lead to product launches.

Paul Ritter, a program manager with research firm The Yankee Group, says he doesn't expect interoperability to occur before this time next year. But he also says, "Interoperability is more important than any of the three companies admit to publicly."

Here's why: Businesses are discovering the value of instant messaging as a management tool. A cottage industry of software firms has sprung up to cater to businesses that want to catalog, monitor, and record employee IM activity.

According to a Yankee Group study released last week, the annualized growth seen by the leading enterprise IM players and software vendors ranged from 46 percent to more than 100 percent across both consumer markets and enterprise sectors.

Yahoo! itself is seeing tremendous IM growth, with its traffic rates at the end of June 2003 reaching 700 million messages per day, nearly 25 percent more than at the same time a year ago. But one key piece of the puzzle is missing, and that's the ability to communicate with other platforms.

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Many see the arrival of interoperability as inevitable, especially since the technology standards for the swap have already been created. The last point to figure out, of course, is how and if the revenues would be split among the participating companies.

In some ways, the remaining battle is similar to the fight waged by cellular-telephone companies against the issue of number portability. The federal government recently tore down the artificial barrier that cellcos had erected to prevent customers from keeping their cell-phone numbers when they switched carriers. Now the cellular companies will need to figure out other ways to hold on to current customers.

With the technology in place for IM interoperability, only companies that devote themselves to product innovation will be able to dissuade customers from fleeing when the walls between IM platforms are torn down.

Investors take note: This fee model -- wherein IM users pay a monthly fee to interact with other IM platforms -- represents what some analysts call "higher-value revenue." Rather than making money by foisting ads on unwitting users, Yahoo! could charge IM subscription fees to willing customers.

It's a fine line, for sure, but the Street would likely reward this ongoing revenue stream because of that difference and because it marks yet another move for the company away from reliance on advertising revenue.

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