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

Re: Net Messaging Standards War Brewing

Author:Mark J. Gardner
Posted:7/23/1999; 8:41:27 AM
Topic:Today's scriptingNews Outline
Msg #:8680 (In response to 8675)
Prev/Next:8679 / 8681

Note that AOL's prevention of MSN Messenger connections also breaks the same capability in the latest beta of Yahoo! Messenger.

Also, from the article:

AOL charged that MSN Messenger poses a security risk to its users because they are asked to type in their AOL user name and password. "They're goading people to reveal their password just like hackers do," the AOL spokeswoman said. "We always tell our customers to never give out their passwords. Microsoft is going against what we've tried to do."

A Microsoft spokesman, however, said there is no security risk because MSN does not gain access to the passwords. To link the two services together, MSN's chat software connects to AOL by using AOL's servers, he said.

I'm inclined to believe Microsoft on this one. The likely situation is that they reverse-engineered the AOL IM protocol, and just like AOL's client, theirs needs to log in to the AOL servers. The whole "hackers" statement from the AOL spokesperson is clueless at best.

Me, I would love to just have a single app for instant messaging, regardless of what ISP or portal my friends prefer. If a standard was reached, the portal/IM players could compete on features instead of lock-in.

Right now AOL's only advantage to the (non-AOL using) Internet user is access to AOL-subscribing friends. But it cuts the other way, too -- AOL customers can't talk to people using other services like ICQ, Yahoo!, or MSN.

It's just a rehash of the online-service wars of the 80s. Remember when it was a pain (or impossible) to email someone if they were on a different service? As Dave would say, once more 'round the loop....

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:51:30 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.