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AOL Won't Enable Instant Messaging Interoperability
chill writes "Wired is reporting 'America Online is scaling back efforts to make its popular instant messaging system work with rivals, saying the task has proven too difficult and expensive.' That's funny, they don't seem to have a problem blocking anyone who figures out how to interoperate. Legally, they are not supposed to offer "next gen" IM over Time Warner's cable lines until they can interoperate. We shall see."
the next version of OS X, 10.2, ships in about a month and it has an app with it called "iChat" thjat is 100% interoperable with AIM. it's autherized by AOL and everything. i don't know what kind of deal Apple made, but now that AOL droke down and allowed one to get in i would think it's just a matter of time.
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It was one of the conditions of the merger of AOL and TW. They were only allowed to merge if they met certain conditions (anti-monopoly measures), one of which was allowing interoperability with other IM clients.
They have the vast majority of the users and are invested in the infrastructure, it shouldn't be a surprise that they are dragging their feet. They have a LOT to lose. And it's something to lose to MS.
Nobody needs to be reminded of the rival AOL vs. MSN, IE vs. Netscape, yadda yadda.
AOL probably just wants to prevent their butts from being undercut by MS. The last thing they want to do is invest tons of resources into something and have MS change the ball game on them. Without some sort of standards/agreement they're vulernable and MS knows it.
-- Scientist: You aren't going to leave me here, are you? Boagh! Thump...
Saying MS messenger comes bundled is an understatement...have you tried removing from XP Home.... it's practically impossible for anyone who isn't very computer literate. Registry edits, the whole bit.
Man. I sure wish chefmonkey was around to see this. He was touting how SIMPLE was the answer to the problem of interop only a few weeks ago. And not, AOL's not even going to play along. Guess he'll have to find a new party line.
From the Jabber from, you have a new push in the IETF, a *working* server-to-server implementation, and multiple competing implementations. (1, 2, 3)
What is the protocol lacking again? As I recall, there were some security concerns, but these issues are being dealt on, including integrating SASL support into the protocol. So why aren't people using this? There is a lot of momentum behind Jabber right now, and I think it'd be silly if companies didn't at least consider it as a solution.
If you're curious, you can always Jabber me. My JID is rynok@jabber.com. Add me to your roster and ask me any questions you like. I can't promise I'll have all the answers, but I'll certainly do my best.
McKiernan said that "true interoperability" would be like e-mail, in which you wouldn't have to be on the same service as another person to send that fellow an IM.
Well, the current level of "service interoperability" we enjoy in email is only available to us because POP3,IMAP, and SMTP are *published* and *open* standards. Yahoo doesn't block rogue email bandits who figure out how to send email to their users from their own SMTP server or home-brewed email client.
McKiernan said that this is a technologically difficult task, but that "no company has done more than ours" to meet that goal.
Uhh...not exactly. Sure, they released the ToC protocol, but in terms of "work" towards that end, it's pretty simple. If you release your protocol, the OS world will do the rest. The bottom line is that they don't _want_ interoperability. If they did, they would release their work and allow others to try and crack the "problem", instead of questionably working on an answer behind closed doors and concluding it infeasible.
--- What