I dont see 4 gazillion messenger programs.
You don't need to. Several multi-messenger programs are available, so you only need that one program connecting to all your different networks and you're all set. ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, no problem (sometimes depending on your OS and the IE-version installed). I currently have three messenger programs, 1) ICQ (which can only connect to the ICQ network, obviously), 2) Trillian (which can connect to ICQ and AIM, but not MSN (yet)) and 3) GAIM (to connect to ICQ, AIM and MSN). Trillian is better looking than GAIM, but GAIM can do MSN, so, if Trillian can't make me connect to MSN, GAIM wins, otherwise Trillian does. It's as simple as that.