By silicon.com, 23 July 2004 11:55
NEWS 23.07.1999: Microsoft has launched a product that aims to break America Online's (AOL) dominance of the instant-messaging (IM) market.
The software, called MSN Messenger Service, will be built into Microsoft's Hotmail web-based email service. It will enable users to enjoy real-time interaction with users of AOL's IM and with 40 million Hotmail users around the world.
AOL has dominated this market with IM, which only allows interaction with other IM users. Microsoft has claimed MSN Messenger Service will break down the proprietary nature of this service.
But the move looks likely to provoke fury from AOL. A New York Times report quoted an AOL spokesman as saying the practice goes beyond simple reverse engineering, and is "akin to the practice of hackers".
23.07.2004: The IM wars are still ongoing and, for consumers at least, interoperability between IM clients from the 'big three' of AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! is as far away as it ever was.
We don't even question the fact that we are able to email people using different email clients, or text each other on different phones and networks but it is a bizarre anomaly in 2004 that consumer IM users can only communicate with people using the same provider.
Third-party IM products such as Trillian promised interoperability but then Microsoft upgraded MSN Messenger to incorporate a block on Trillian.
In the corporate IT world, however, moves have been made to allow for interoperability. Just last week, the big three announced that Microsoft's Live Communications Server (LCS), which offers IM for corporate users, will connect with AOL IM, Yahoo! Messenger and its own MSN Messenger.
Microsoft is focusing more on its enterprise IM product than AOL and Yahoo! are. Both AOL and Yahoo! announced last month that they will stop selling the corporate versions of their IM products.
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