Yahoo! Inc.

Oath Inc.

Samir B Mehta

Greg A Rosenberg

Ethan H Diamond

Kevin R Johnston

James P Kenney

Instant messaging, also known as chat, is integrated with electronic mail in a user interface that provides for automatic completion of recipient names or addresses, such as email addresses or chat addresses, as a user types characters of the name or address when addressing a message. The automatic completion feature displays a list of matches, which are names or addresses in, for example, the user's online contact list, that match the characters the user types. The matches list may contain names or addresses for multiple different communication methods. The user may then select one of the names or addresses to compose a message to be sent to the selected name or address. A user interface is then provided for composing a message to be sent to the selected name or address using the communication protocol associated with the selected name or address.

Autocomplete for integrating diverse methods of electronic communication

Instant messaging, also known as chat, is integrated with electronic mail in a user interface that provides for conversion of messages between electronic mail (email) and instant messaging. A user interface is provided for allowing a user who is composing an email message to convert the message to a chat message. The chat message will include any content that was present in the electronic mail message, and the user can continue to compose the chat message, and then send it to a chat address determined automatically from the email address of the original email message. Notifications are provided that indicate when chat users have logged on to or logged off from the chat service. These notifications assist a user composing a message to select the most appropriate communication method based upon the current online presence of the intended recipient. A user interface for converting messages in the opposite direction, from chat to email, is also provided.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Samir B Mehta