UPDATE: Finding that the road to instant-messaging (IM) interoperability is paved with potholes instead of gold, AOL Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit will in the near term look to establish hosting agreements with third-party IM providers to open its heavily used AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) network.
AOL last week revealed its new strategy in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission. As part of America Online's blockbuster 2000 merger with Time Warner, the online company is required to file "progress reports" with the FCC on its work towards making its AIM network interoperable with users of competing services.
The FCC did not mandate that AOL open its IM network to competition as a condition of the merger. The agency did say, though, that the online giant would have to first open its IM network to competitors if it enabled video conferencing and other advanced features via Time Warner's broadband cable lines.
In the latest report filed by company Vice President and Associate General Counsel Steven N. Teplitz, AOL said its efforts to provide users of unaffiliated IM services access to exchange text-based messages with AIM users have been fraught with difficulties. AOL's main goal has been to provide such services in a way that protects IM network performance, security and privacy.
To that end, AOL developed an initial prototype gateway server that would translate basic text-based messages and presence information between the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leverage (SIMPLE) emerging standard and AOL's own IM protocol. AOL also conducted a server-to-server trial with IBM Lotus' Sametime enterprise IM (EIM) system. The Lotus test showed that while "a gateway server could be effectively designed, the prototype server was limited in scope and functionality and demonstrated that true IM server-to-server interoperability would require significant expenditures of time and resources to develop."
AOL also said the public IM industry in general has not demonstrated server-to-server interoperability in the past 18 months, and that the IETF is "moving slowly" in developing a final version of the SIMPLE protocols.
With all of that in mind, AOL said it will "on a going forward basis...focus its efforts on pursuing alternative solutions that will enable its IM users to communicate with the users of alternate IM providers." AOL has already entered into one such agreement with Apple Computer for Apple's new iChat IM client. iChat, which will be included in the next upgrade of Apple's OS X operating system (version 10.2, code-named Jaguar), was developed by Apple and will be compatible with the AIM network. Essentially, Apple brings the client to AOL's IM-hosted party.
"Subscribers of Apple's Mac.com and future subscribers to iChat will be able to exchange instant messages with AIM's full user base" under terms of the deal, AOL said in its filing. "There will be no need for the Mac.com and iChat users to obtain an AIM account, and Apple's subscribers will be readily identifiable through the use of a separate suffix on their usernames."
In its filing, AOL also cited "existing market conditions" as a reason behind its switch from server-to-server solutions to hosting pacts. The company cited an increasingly competitive marketplace as the user base of both MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger have steadily increased. Also, AOL said both Microsoft and Yahoo have introduced video-streaming IM applications, and Microsoft has made its Windows Messenger -- which comes bundled with its Windows XP operating system -- compatible with MSN Messenger.
AOL is far and away the leader of public IM, with a self-claimed 150 million users. In a survey released last November, Jupiter Research found that 43.6 million people used AOL's various IM services (both the AOL Instant Messenger client and the IM feature in AOL's proprietary client) in the "at-home" environment, while 18.5 million used MSN Messenger and 11.9 million IM'ed with Yahoo Messenger. ICQ, which is owned by AOL, is used by 7.3 million people, Jupiter also said.
AOL is not throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, though. While the hosted IM solution will provide AOL with a short-term fix for providing "a secure, reliable and cost-effective means to provide interoperability between AOL IM and unaffiliated communities," the company said it is not completely eliminating the server-to-server route for interoperability. "AOL has not, however, foreclosed the use of a server-to-server solution if and when one is developed, and remains open to proposals designed to enable various IM communities to communicate with one another."
AOL officials did not make themselves available for comment on the filing.
Of the other two big public IM services, Yahoo Senior PR Manager Mary Osako said, "Yahoo has and continues to support efforts towards functional interoperability by working collaboratively with the industry to open the instant messaging community in a seamless, convenient, and secure manner."
A Microsoft spokesperson said, "As we've said all along, we believe that the ultimate benefit for consumers is a standard for instant messaging/interoperability among all IM products. MSN continues to work with the IETF and the rest of the industry to make that happen so that consumers can communicate openly and freely with friends and family no matter what instant messaging service they use."
Instant messaging has been predicted to replace e-mail as the prime communications medium for business. And a study out last week from J.D. Power and Associates showed that IM is used either as an alternative or a replacement for long-distance calling in the U.S.
Bob Woods is the managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.
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