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AOL Won't Enable Instant Messaging Interoperability

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday July 25, 2002 @12:33AM from the walled-garden dept.

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."

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Re:Why? by keesh · 2002-07-25 00:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.