Computer makers are being drawn into the battle raging between rivals Microsoft and AOL Time Warner as both companies pitch deals to PC makers to gain prominent placement of their icons on computer screens.
"There's been a lot of hard discussions with AOL, and MSN," said Compaq Computer spokesman Roger Frizzell.
Microsoft and AOL are jockeying for prominent placement on the screens that first greet consumers when they turn on their computers in an effort to boost growth in their services. The talks were opened up by Microsoft's decision earlier this month, made in the wake of legal pressure, to offer computer makers flexibility in how to present icons on the main screen, or desktop, of its new operating system Windows XP.
"We are looking at alternatives that were not available to us two, three, four weeks ago," he said. "The change of XP kind of opened the door to this discussion." AOL Time Warner also confirmed that they started talking to computer makers about how icons would be featured on the desktops of computers sold with Windows XP, which will be widely available in October.
Compaq said it has decided to go ahead to feature AOL on its desktop screen, considered the prime piece of real estate on a computer. MSN would be relegated to the "start" menu, where a user would have to click and drag the cursor through at least two steps to get to the service. "They (Microsoft) made proposals to us and those proposals didn't take shape," he said. "At this point MSN is embedded in the start menu, and that could change, but that's how we are going forward."
