AOL's IM War
The Internet industry just keeps getting stranger and stranger. America Online which has embraced open standards in areas like high-speed Net access, is locked in a duel with Microsoft which is famous for keeping it's Windows secrets closely guarded and proprietary, over instant messaging. Microsoft (among others) would like to see IM move towards an open standard so that users of one service can chat with users of another.
For those of you that don't know, instant messaging or IM allows you to communicate in real time with other people. Sort of like a private chat room. Microsoft latest version of it's MSN Messenger, allowed its users to contact and chat to users of AOL's IM services. America Online quickly released a patch to prohibit MSN Messenger users the ability to contact AOL IM users. AOL also took measures to make sure its product would not work with Prodigy and Yahoo's IM services as well.
America Online's IM service boats 45 million users and an additional 40 million registrations in ICQ, the instant messaging software it acquired last year. A popular opinion among 'Net analysts is that AOL is reluctant to adopt open standards so that it can protect its market share. Of course Microsoft, Yahoo, Disney, AT&T, etc. are interested in seeing the standards adopted so that they can grab some of the market.
So for now users of AOL IM cannot chat with users of Microsoft's or anyone else's instant messaging software. It's similar to if users of Microsoft's Outlook could not send or receive email from AOL NetMail or Eudora's email program.
