AOL vs. Trillian

Trinition writes: "ZDNews is reporting that AOL is once again trying to shut out the competition. Trillian has been updated twice in the past 24 hours to work around the blocks AOL is throwing up to prevent the popular IM client from interoperating with the AOL Instant Messenger service. Will Cerulean Studios hold up better than those they follow in the footsteps of (i.e. Microsoft, AT&T and Jabber)?"

Comments

The part that really sucks...

[Sc00ter]

Is that they're killing off Trillian, and their first fix was to force them to turn off their "SecureIM" feature. Something that uses 128bit encryption between trillian clients. I loved that feature. The other odd thing is AOL isn't stopping third party clients from attaching to ICQ, another IM network that they own.

Oh well.. I'm glad I signed up for MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger and use trillian for both of those too..

Why is this so wrong?

[Anixamander]

No doubt the posts will soon start flowing in that AOL is evil for preventing this little company from accessing their network. My question is why is this wrong? Why should America Online not be the exclusive provider of America Online Instant Messaging functionality? Sure they do it to make money off of ads and exert some kind of institutional control. But do other companies have a right to be a part of this? Is it merely that AOL will have a monopoly on the instant messaging market? There certainly seem to be enough big competitors out there to prevent this. Just curious about why all the fuss.

How Are the Changes Being Made?

[eAndroid]

Can anyone explain to me how AOL is changing their protocol without breaking their own IM? Is their client just more flexible, or does it have built in support for a dozen protocol revisions?

I would hope that whatever they're doing the clues as to what the next change might be are already there in the client. Perhaps we could build a fake ICQ server and run tests on the AOL client with slightly modified protocols to see what it supports. Then build in the same support into Trillian et al.

For me I'd love to stop using AOL's ICQ since I use OS X. The official client doesn't behave at all like a good OS X app should.

Re:Why the moaning?

[TheCabal]

but they don't want just that...they *want* you to use their network...*but only* with their client. It's a simple matter of protecting their revenue stream....or in this case, potential revenue stream.

And this is bad, why? AOL is in the business of making money. I think some people forget that... businesses make money. Letting some "freeloaders" in are going to detract from that, along with opening potential security issues (as if they don't have enough of their own) because now there's uncontrolled, unchecked software accessing their clients. It's their user database and their IM protocol they developed. They're entitled to include/exclude whomever they see fit. There are IM standards available for anyone who wants to write a standards-based IM client. This isn't hurting anyone except the freeloaders.

Re:Way to go AOL

[DavidBrown]

If AOL's IM is not defined as a monopoly, then Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly either with Windows. Is Linix and OS X just a figment of my imagination?

Monopoly status isn't defined as 100% market share - essentially it's a market share so big that the monopoly has the power to dictate to the market instead of the other way around. Instead of consumer need controlling the market, the supplier leaves the consumer with a "take it or leave it" proposition.

With a secure monopoly, AOL can tell everyone - you have the right to use IM, which you need to stay in touch (they say), but you have to use our cheesy clients and you have to expose yourself to all of our advertisements (especially for AOLTimeWarner subsidiaries).

Do you know that 80% of the celebraties featured on the AOL and Compuserve splash pages are AOLTimeWarner products?

The open source counter to this is "let's make our own IM system". This is great, but if it cannot interface with the AOL IM system, then it's back to the old Microsoft technique of "Buy Office, or forget about reading the documents produced by the people who do buy Office."

Broken Logic

[piotrr]

If one million people are using Trillian instead of AIM, what makes you think any of these people would be using AIM if they weren't using Trillian? I for one have never seen the AIM client in my life, and I still use that portion of Trillian since it allows me to contact even more people. If I wasn't using Trillian, I would simply not be in touch with these people. I'm not prepared to run yet another IM program to do the exact same thing and I would rather just stay away from it. Especially with some security issues that have come up, and the potential bulkiness and advertisements of the AIM client.

Your idea is a valid thought at first glance, the comparison that 1M-people using Trillian "instead" of AIM means a 1M-ad-viewer loss to AIM. This is simply not true. It's the same kind of logic that applied when game publishers back in the heyday of Commodore 64 games pirating said that they were losing N times X dollars from piracy, where N is the number of pirate copies and X is the price per unit. Most of these N people would not pay the X dollars, or view the X advertisements and produce the N*X revenue the company claims to be losing.

If Trillian is forced to fall back to older AIM compatibility, or even drop AIM alltogether, I am hardly going out to get the AIM client. I'll badmouth the company by retelling this story when people ask me to go on AIM, and maybe I'll even win a few more contacts over to Trillian or ICQ or whatever service might be the most interesting.

I changed from ICQ to Trillian and found that I could even drop my old pIRCh as well. *I'm*not going to change IMs a second time. I'm staying.

Re:Fire!

[IceFox]

Kinkatta. I am the lead developer of Kinkatta. Kinkatta uses the toc protocal so we don't have these login wars like oscar does. (although twice we did break something that caused us not to login, but that is another story). Because of this we have been using our coding time to write up a plugin system that allows me to talk to someone in another language (on the fly babelfish translation) or encryt messages, or append my current song in xmms to my info (get icefox2's info on aim to see for yourself what is playing in my room). These of course are just my example plugins that I have made and anyone can make cooler ones.

-Benjamin Meyer

AIM service does some things *right*

[kisrael]

I've mostly used AIM, largely because that's what most people I wanted to chat with used. (And I'm really irritated at losing contact with some Trillian using buddies.)

I tried ICQ, but AIM does at least two things better:
* the ICQ UI is a horrendous mess. AIM has a good, simple UI. Cleaner in many ways then the Trillian version I used. And as the release new versions of the AIM client, whenever they change default behaviors (like minimizing to task bar vs system tray, etc) they're very good at letting users get the old behavior back in the options menu.
* I have never received AIM spam, but those two weeks of ICQ were nothing but teen porn ads. I'm not sure if its ICQ numbering scheme that makes it so spam prone, or something AIM does better

There are somethings AIM doesn't do, like my friend pointed out ICQ has a cool autolog of conversations feature, but overall, AIM is a
good little client, other clients could take a few pages from its usability book.

lets make something clear

[nhavar]

• AOL generates ad revenue on a per user basis, not on whether the ad actually made it to the client.
• What trillian does is not illegal, otherwise AOL would have taken them to court (which they did not do with MS/ATT/Jabber/Odigo et al).
• Reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is granted by law (see VCR).
• There are already hacks available for AOL/ICQ et al that strip the ad or replace the ad space and AOL takes no action against them.
  
• AOL lies and states that it's a security issue and accuse the competitor of "hacking" to attempt to turn public sentiment against the compititor. If it were "hacking", AOL would be able to call the police, file a lawsuit, or notify the FBI. Since this is not "hacking", in their modified sense of the word, then no law has been broken and AOL can do nothing but shuffle their protocol to attempt to block people out. This comes down to basic fraud.
  
• The ruling when AOL/Timewarner merged was that they could do so only if they opened their IM service. As far as I know, no timeline was put on that interoperability and therefore AOL could stall indefinitely. The makers of Trillian appear to just be helping we the consumer receive what the ruling had already requested, but in a significantly limited fashion (I.E. not true interoperability)
• AOL took no action against Trillian until it gained significant popularity. Only then did it become a "security concern". Meanwhile any client under a million users is not technically a "security concern". So any of you hackers out there who want to hack into AOL's service feel free to get 900,000 of your compatriots together and nail their system. If there are security concerns with AOL's AIM protocol then why do they suggest that it is the best and most secure and want it as a standard above all others? If there is a security concern with the use/implementation of that protocol why not simply plug the hole and be done with it? Why? Because they are lying about the security risk implemented by alternate clients.
• Why is it that no other im system has shut out Trillian? Because the rest of the IM systems/companies want interoperability and are working to that goal, only AOL remains apart from that venture because they are serving their own greed and monopolizing the IM market through preditory practices. AOL has the potential to make MS look like an amature when it comes to market predation.

Since I signed up with a user name on AIM they make money off of me. They use me as a resource to fund their activities therefore I will use them as a resource for mine. If through my choice of clients I consume more resources than they gain from me then it's time for them to look at a different business model. The last time I looked the majority ad on AIM was still for AOL's own over priced service. I did not, upon signing up with AIM, agree to use a particular client to consume said resource therefore they should not block me from use because of my choice. Saying that there is no "business relationship" makes it appear that AOL wants one, this is not the case as has been proven time and time again. AOL does not want business relationships that will do nothing to further their capture of market share.

Re:Yeah.... riiiiight...

[DeMorganLaw]

Trillian unlike Microsoft, AT&T, and Jabber was designed exclusively to interoperate with several messenging services. I have friends who use AIM, MSN, Yahoo and ICQ, with Trillian I just need one ap to communicate with them all. It also has a pretty good IRC client built in, I for one love the program and hope AOL takes its head out its ass. AOL is moaning like a whore years after its Netscape was raped by Microsoft, yet they too are trying to dick with the competition. I thought TOC and OSCAR were supposed to be open standards by now?

Let's all destroy a good thing.

[GodInHell]

Yes, By all means, Topple AOL. After all, they can't just shut down the service if it becomes to heavily used to remain popular right? Oh wait, they can and will.

I love this; a company produces a free product, does nothing to stop free competition (hello, if AOL were smart they're outright buy ICQ and Others, then charge 2 bucks a month to use their software.), they simply refuse to let other companies profit at their expense. What does this earn them? Cries of monopoly, and folks linking thier practices to Microsoft. Please note the lack of court proceedings. Please note the lack of impotent threats. Please note the lack of whining. AOL and Microsoft are linked only in that the two are succesful software companies, in an age when that is becoming rare (thanks to MS). When they Roll out the Lawyers to destroy Tillian for daring to exist in their space, then come talk to me. Until then, it's an amusing battle between the corp techs at AOL, and the corp hackers at Trillian.

Albeit, I've been an AOL user since before they allowed access to the 'net, so I'm certainly biased.

-GiH
ps - I'll put my money on Aztechnology buying them both in 20 or so years ;).

Re:Fire!

[Admiral Lazzurs]

Making plugins that generic would be excellent, there is an Free OSCAR lib so anyone can add that to their client. I wish all of the IM client maintainers could agree on an API, but it is NEVER going to happen.

I still however can't understand why other clients use OSCAR, AOL has been nice enough to provide the TOC servers and the bandwidth for those servers for any 3rd party client wanting to access the AIM service but everyone seems to want to be using OSCAR and then they have the cheek to complain when it stops working.

BTW, just incase anyone was wondering (and you did not guess from my homepage setting) I am the maintainer of Everybuddy, and this standpoint has come from many user discussions relating to EB. EB currently uses TOC and I have never had the sort of problems all of the OSCAR clients are having.

Take care all - RL