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Follow UsNEW YORK: America Online, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc., has put on hold its efforts to let users of its instant messaging service chat with users of other services through a direct connection, according to a letter AOL filed with the Federal Communications Commission.
As a condition to AOL's $106.2 billion purchase of Time Warner, the company was required to provide regulators with an update every six months on its efforts toward "interoperability" --the ability for users of one messaging service to chat with users of rival services. AOL is the market leader in instant messaging. AOL said in the letter, filed July 16, it decided to put its efforts for server-to-server interoperability on hold. This form of interoperability involves AOL's servers and servers of another messaging service and lets users of different services chat through a direct connection. AOL's scaled back efforts toward interoperability are a more limited approach than many of its rivals had hoped to see from the market leader, one analyst said. As reasons for the shift, AOL cited market conditions, the state of technology development and the significant resources required to pursue this means of interoperability. Instead, AOL said it would focus on alternative ways of achieving interoperability, such as through a relationship with Apple Computer Inc. through which it would host its instant messaging solutions. "While this is not the kind of server-to-server interoperability we and others have looked at, it does represent a way forward that is available now to allow AIM users and users of other communities to exchange messages conveniently," AOL spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan said. She added that server-to-server interoperability has proven to be "a hard nut to crack" for the entire industry, but AOL remains interested in anything that might be developed on that front. AOL and Apple have created iChat, a service that Apple developed and that can communicate with AOL's AIM messaging service. Still, one industry analyst said iChat was a move away from interoperability efforts. "The deal with Apple isn't interoperability. These are AOL servers and AOL technology wrapped around a fancier Apple-based client but that's clearly not what the opponents of AOL have been clamoring for," said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research. "Cutting a deal with Apple is doing a deal with someone who is not a player in the service, who wouldn't have started an IM service of its own." AOL's rivals had called for it to open up its popular messaging services, AIM and ICQ, to communicate with other services as regulators were reviewing AOL's merger in 2000. The cries have died down as many of those rivals have been hit by the economic downturn and dot-com bust. Rival Microsoft Corp.'s MSN has gained market share after folding its instant messaging service into its Windows operating system and Yahoo Inc. has also seen its messaging service gain popularity. © Reuters