AOL Locks Out Competing Chat Services

Illicit Entry?

At the crux of the dispute is the procedure Yahoo and MSN Messenger users have to follow to interact with AIM users. To give their users access to AOL's messaging service, both competing services require their users to log on to AIM through their Yahoo or MSN messaging client. This involves obtaining an AIM account and entering the user name and password for that account.

MSN and Yahoo maintain that they never collect user names and passwords. The vendors say they simply facilitate a third-party log-on to AIM to establish interoperability between clients.

AOL strongly disapproves of Microsoft's and Yahoo's procedures. On Thursday, AOL accused MSN and Yahoo of breaking the "cardinal rule of the Internet" by asking users to divulge their AOL screen name and password. AOL likened MSN and Yahoo to hackers for requesting this type of information from its users.

Attempts to send messages from Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger to AOL Instant Messenger users now result in an "incorrect password/login" error.

Competitive Compatibility

In a prepared statement, Microsoft called the situation contrary to users' wishes.

"It is unfortunate that AOL chose to purposely disable the interoperability between the two services--a solution consumers have clearly been asking for," Microsoft said. "It is clear that AOL is more focused on its proprietary hold on the instant messaging space than [on] what is right for consumers. Microsoft is still committed to providing the interoperability that consumers are demanding via an open-standards approach."

No open standards currently exist, so only people who use the same messaging software can chat online.

The spat among the portal powerhouses has more to do with AOL's fear that Microsoft and Yahoo will undermine its dominance of instant messaging than with security concerns, analysts say. And, they say, it underscores the need for open standards for instant messaging, which would make chatting online as easy as using a telephone.

Representatives of the Internet Engineering Task Force, which is developing open messaging standards, liken the state of instant messaging today to a world in which telephones could make calls only to people using the same phone service.