Talks held by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that aimed to set technical specifications allowing rivals such as AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Yahoo and others to develop a joint IM platform have stalled, according to people close to the discussions.
AOL Time Warner, the leader in instant messaging, says it is continuing to work on solutions to connect its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ services to competitors but that it has no firm deadline for implementation.
Meanwhile, an independent effort to connect incompatible services this year by a coalition of AOL Time Warner competitors, known as IMUnified, has run into delays.
"In retrospect, it was unrealistic," one executive in an IMUnified company said about the time frame to launch the standard.
The quest for interoperability has driven the IM market ever since competitors first stepped forward to challenge AOL Time Warner for control of one of the fastest-growing technologies on the Net. But now, in a sign that frustrations over cooperation are fading, IM developers such as Microsoft are moving ahead with independent plans for the technology, leaving AOL Time Warner and others to go their own way or follow their lead.
In the strongest sign yet that Microsoft is preparing to provide a broad platform for IM standards, the company this week unveiled Windows Messenger, a product that offers chat, multimedia, conferencing and telephony features that wrap around any IM product.
"From a strategic standpoint, IM providers will certainly want to work with any underlying protocol that Microsoft would want to support without question because of their strength in the marketplace," said Alex Diamandis, an executive at rival IM company Odigo. AOL Time Warner "doesn't have the ability to do what Microsoft can do, which is to embed it into all of these other applications--embed it into Outlook, embed it into Office, embed it into browsers, and on and on."
The strategy reflects significant changes in the marketplace from a year ago. Although AOL Time Warner still leads with the combined use of its separate AIM and ICQ networks, Microsoft has presented evidence that its MSN Messenger service is the single-most widely used IM service.
Perhaps more importantly, Microsoft is feeling new confidence with the upcoming October release of its Windows XP operating system that it can drive standards single-handedly by expanding the features supported by instant messaging and encouraging developers to build to its specifications.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan confirmed the company's open platform is an intentional contrast with AOL Time Warner's proprietary approach.
"The question you need to ask is, 'Where is the value of developers?'" he said. "Do they want to call on things that are in Windows XP, in AOL or in Linux? That's up to the developer. So from our point of view, we're always considering how to provide excitement for developers."
