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AOL Won't Enable Instant Messaging Interoperability

Posted by ryuzaki0 on 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."

2 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by Corby911 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    One would think that gaim would be a good argument that interoperability is possible, given that it spports AIM/ICQ (Oscar), MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Napster, and Zephyr.

    --
    Monday is a horrible way to spend 1/7 of your life.
  2. Not the biggest AOL story... by JimPooley · · Score: 2, Offtopic

    Nope. AOL Time Warner are having their accounting practices investigated by the Securities and Exchanges Commission.
    A BBC News article says:-
    The investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in response to allegations in the Washington Post that the firm boosted online advertisement revenue through a series of "unconventional" deals between 2000 and 2002.
    That means there is no proof that AOL has been involved in the same sort of accounting deceptions that brought down Enron and WorldCom.
    But such a fact-finding investigation was the first step that unravelled those firms.

    --

    "Information wants to be paid"