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TechnologyDaily Mobile
AOL's Instant Messaging World Under Fire
America Online's hold on the instant messaging services market is drawing scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission, lawmakers and companies shut out of what could become the Internet's next "killer app."
The FCC is reviewing AOL's dominant position in the instant messaging market as part of its review the Internet giant's proposed merger with Time Warner. A group of instant messaging competitors, the FreeIM Coalition is pushing the agency to force AOL to make IM services interoperable with others as a condition of approving the merger.
Members of FreeIM include AT&T, Microsoft, Yahoo, Tribal Voice, AltaVista, iCAST, CMGI, ExciteAtHome and Prodigy. AOL has blocked a number of these companies from operating with its instant messaging service.
Besides scrutiny from the FCC, AOL has been chastised by some members of Congress for being inconsistent in arguing for open access in the broadband cable spectrum and against it when it comes to instant messaging.
If the merger is approved, AOL would have enormous control over content, consumers and a variety of Internet applications. Those factors, combined with its current 90 percent market share for instant messaging, consumers would be denied choice and innovation, AOL critics say.
Instant messaging only has recently gained attention as companies explore the business potential and adults see the benefits of instant communication.
The History
In the beginning, teenagers went crazy over the idea of AOL's buddy list that allowed them to know when their friends were online so they could then send e-mail to each other. AOL took notice, acquired instant messaging technology and developed that technology to its present-day IM service, boosting their appeal in the teen market.
Many adults dismissed the service as this generation's hula-hoop and a nuisance besides. Now the application is gaining notice in the business community and members of the industry see instant messaging as a profitable proposition and other businesses have entered the market.
"IM is going to go far beyond the teenage chat we are discussing today," said Matt Fleury, a spokesman for Tribal Voice, which offers an instant messaging product. "Ownership of IM in the future is extremely valuable and very important," he said.
The Future
The technology is evolving quickly and it is currently unclear how it will become an integral part of personal and professional life, experts inside and outside the industry say, but they all agree that it will.
In mid-June, Wireless Week reported that instant messaging should reach 175 million active users within the next 18 months, up from 50 million current users. The growth is expected to be fueled in part by the addition of instant messaging to Web-enabled phones. AOL boasts 90 million users, but those numbers include downloads of the product and not necessarily active users. Tribal Voice has 8 million users.
Instant messaging also "can put competitive pressure in markets where there is skewed pricing on telecommunications," said Barbara Dooley, executive director of the Commercial Internet eXchange Association (CIX). She noted that Latin America and other countries that pay a high price for long distance services have adopted instant messaging as a valuable business tool. CIX represents Internet service providers.
Security Issues
New, competing instant messaging products can't communicate with AOL's instant messaging service because the company will not allow it, citing privacy and security concerns. Rushing into opening the system could put consumers at risk of privacy breaches and could open up the medium to unwanted messages equivalent to spam or unsolicited commercial e-mail, said AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose.
Primrose said AOL is committed to making its system interoperable with any other IM system, but the company wants to make certain the same mistakes that led to spam on e-mail are not repeated. The technology standards are complicated because of the component that recognizes when users are online, and makes putting the proper protections in place more difficult. "We are very aware of the fact that we don't want it to be a host environment for porno spam. That would kill IM," Primrose said.
The majority of unsolicited e-mail advertises pornography or get-rich-quick schemes and could drive users away from instant messaging.
AOL wants to see universal services like its "knock-knock" feature that allows a user to screen instant messages before agreeing to accept them and protections like the "neighborhood watch" that provides a outlet for complaints if someone is being harassed. The complaint process can lead to the harasser being kicked off the messaging service.
Fleury called AOL's commitment to interoperability and calls for consumer protection a disingenuous "effort to divert attention from an indefensible practice of blocking IM choice."
Privacy is a policy issue and not a technical problem, Fleury said, and should be addressed as such. He also noted that going forward without adequate safeguards for consumer protection would be foolhardy and counterproductive because a company would alienate its customers.
While most companies would adhere to that philosophy, others could see instant messaging as a way to make money by selling the names and addresses to others that would bombard users with unsolicited messages, industry experts say.
Fleury agreed that there are issues of privacy and security with any technology but said that they "are in no way elevated by interoperability among IM providers that use the same protocols."
Dooley also noted that a number of technical issues must be resolved for the various applications to interact safely and effectively with one another, but that a solution cannot be reached without AOL's active participation.
Primrose pointed to AOL's membership in the Internet Engineering Task Force and the draft report it filed with the group, saying it was a blueprint to reach interoperability. The design AOL outlined would achieve interoperability among systems, protect privacy and security, be scalable to large networks or individual families with their own servers, require no government or central oversight and would maintain user name consistency among the various instant messaging systems.
Fleury scoffed at AOL's claim that it was actively working on the problem.
"It concerns me that there is this spin that this issue is so complex, yet there is not active participation except very strategically positioned public relations initiatives," he said. "As long as there is a sense that regulators may address this issue in context of a merger, AOL is interested. At the same time, it is clear they will go no farther than absolutely necessary in terms of actually achieving interoperability."
But AOL said it has nearly a dozen IM partners that are evidence that it is willing to offer open access when the situation is right. The partners include Apple, Arch Communications, Bell South Mobility, DigitalWork.com, EarthLink, FaceTime Communications, Juno, Kinko's, IBM's Lotus, Lycos, Motorola, Net2Phone, Nokia, Novell, Oxygen Media, RealNetworks, Research in Motion, Riffage, TV Guide and Voyager.net.
 | - by Teri Rucker |
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