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CNET
July 23, 2001
AOL Time Warner on Monday must give federal regulators a progress report detailing efforts to open its instant messaging networks to rivals, the first such filing required as a condition of the companys January merger.
In advance of the report, the company on Friday said it is close to announcing a partner for testing links between its leading AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) service and other IM networks. As part of the test, AOL will use one of the proposed technologies submitted as a standard to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an AOL spokesman added.
The filing to the Federal Communications Commission marks the latest chapter in an ongoing saga over creating a common language for IM services to communicate–a fight that has pitted some of the technologys largest competitors against each other in a bitter battle over control of one the fastest-growing technologies on the Net.
Although interoperability a year ago was viewed through the lens of AOLs resistance to open its networks to competitors, today the landscape has vastly changed. Critics that lobbied to force AOLs cooperation are now increasingly staking out their own independent territories.
Lack of interoperability continues to hamper IM development. But analysts say it is not the make-or-break issue for deep-pocket newcomers to the business, such as Microsoft, that many had once assumed it was.
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