You don't hear AOL or MSN complaining about "Open Access" for instant messaging much these days. Why? Because where the focus was once on the service's attractiveness and usefulness to consumers, it's now about pulling users as deeply into their networks as possible toward revenue-generating centers. Interoperability with competing products is likely the least of their worries, especially with many folks loading two or more messaging services onto their hard drives.
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Last July, IMUnified, a coalition of technology and instant messaging companies comprised of AT&T (NYSE: T), Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) MSN, and others, launched with the intention of establishing an open standard for instant messaging technology so users of different services could chat with each other. Now that group's website looks like a ghost town, its press area unchanged since August. (A call to a spokeswoman listed on the website wasn't returned in time for publication.) But is that surprising? Though not so firmly stated, the apparent goal of IMUnified was to open up AOL Time Warner's (NYSE: AOL) instant messaging service to other companies -- as Microsoft tried to do by force in 1999 when it launched MS Messenger -- and it has failed. Failed, actually, might be too strong a word, as Microsoft has apparently come to see AOL's side of the story in the approximately two intervening years. While the "Open AOL" argument at the time was one of convenience and smiley-faced interoperability, that's apparently been supplanted by cold business practicality. Anyone who's been using instant messaging software since the early AOL or ICQ days remembers the essentially no-frills interfaces and functionality. Now, however, a user gets banner ads, stock quotes, news, and other features along with their buddy lists. Today's edition of The Washington Post, meanwhile, includes a feature on Microsoft's next-generation of instant messaging product, slated to include audio- and video-conferencing features, among other things. The focus, for instant messaging providers, is clearly inward, not outward. This comes as the war for subscribers continues to heat up. Last week, Microsoft launched a $50 million ad campaign to lure AOL users with slightly lower per-month Internet access fees to its MSN service. Both companies are spending heavily to get new users into their networks so they can be plied for the purchase of other goods and services. AOL, of course, made the business' defining bet by purchasing Time Warner. And the backdrop of the companies' ongoing negotiations over whether AOL will be featured on the desktop of Microsoft's upcoming XP operating system -- which may extend even further, as Microsoft's Explorer is currently AOL's default browser -- hangs over all. Though the companies, which have dueled over Microsoft's competitive practices in the past, are not best friends, they also need to work together to offer users the broadest possible world of Internet options. In the end, though, their respective priorities will always be to use their reach and marketing muscle to make their own services indispensable to more and more users. Given all that, interoperability with competing products is likely the least of their worries -- especially as many folks don't think twice about loading two or more messaging services onto their hard drives. Dave Marino-Nachison gets misty whenever you're near. His stock holdings can be viewed online, as can The Motley Fool's disclosure policy.
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