Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

a way for aol to win?

Author:mat wrigley
Posted:8/10/1999; 2:05:48 PM
Topic:Is it time to short AOL?
Msg #:9319 (In response to 9252)
Prev/Next:9318 / 9320

while sitting here, waiting for bt to come and sort out our isdn line, it occurs to me that one strategy for aol in the instant messaging war would be for them to merge icq and their aolim the next time they update these programs... it seems to me that aol i m has pretty good penetration in the us, while icq has a good global following... a merged system would have pretty good coverage, online population-wise... (incidentally i think $180m for icq was a bargain price cf. hotmail for example)...

i’m not a software whizz but it doesn’t appear to me to be an unreasonable task to 1) encrypt both icq and aol protocols and 2) get the two to talk to each other, while at the same time supporting previous formats while ppl get round to upgrading their system... (or not as the case may be... i’m still running the first version of icq on my win3.1 486/50 clunker)... with aolim and icq talking to each other, microsoft would perhaps have to go back to the drawing board, such would be the penetration of the merged system...

meanwhile, has anybody raised any security issues relating to odigo?... because it follows where you go does this not present the same problem that the ‘what’s related?’ feature on netscape raised a while back...

(footnote: typing this up on word, the spellchecker suggests i use a capital ‘m’ in ‘microsoft’... no such suggestion for netscape... and spellchecker isn’t in the dictionary either!)...

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