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AOL tests linking of instant messenger services

Industry Standard

(IDG) -- Since January, some users of AOL's ICQ instant messenger service have been able to log in through the company's Instant Messenger interface, suggesting that the company's two dominant systems might be more closely tied than previously thought.

Several times during the past eight months, and without any publicity, AOL released Instant Messenger software that works as an ICQ interface, says spokeswoman Tricia Primrose. A small but unspecified number of ICQ users have logged into ICQ and communicated with other ICQ users through the IM interface, she said.

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Although Primrose says the link between Instant Messenger and ICQ was created as a "byproduct" of research into messaging and did not make the two programs interoperable, it moves the company closer to creating a worldwide system with 130 million users. AOL's dominance in instant messaging has been a major concern of regulators looking at the planned merger of AOL and Time Warner. Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.

The discovery of the link provides new fodder for competitors looking for concessions from AOL-Time Warner as part of their proposed merger. The Federal Communications Commission is considering forcing AOL to open the system once it combines its two services, or within six months of the merger, whichever comes first. IM competitors such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Prodigy have lobbied the FCC to require AOL to open its services, and they are likely to seize on this new information to renew the push for the agency's action.

If AOL's services work together more fully, "it opens the door for us to argue for interoperability," Brian Park, a senior instant messenger producer at Yahoo, said in Tuesday's edition of the Wall Street Journal.

AOL counters that it is working with an industry group to develop instant messaging standards that will protect customers' security and privacy, and that once those standards are adopted, AOL will open its system.

AOL created IM in 1989, and 60 million people now use the service. Acquired by AOL two years ago, ICQ now has 70 million users, making it the largest instant-messaging service in the world. Each service has nearly three times as many users as the next-closest competitor.

AOL faces challenges in integrating the different user bases of the two services. ICQ users tend to be more technically oriented, using filters for incoming messages. IM users tend to have less technical know-how and use simpler features.

Although many observers predict that AOL would try to bring the ICQ users onto the IM platform, a company spokeswoman acknowledged that the two sets of users are very different and said the company does not plan to force one group to migrate from one system to the other.

In the end, however, a desire for the dominance that would result from having a single service with six times as many users as its nearest competitor might inspire AOL to combine the two services.




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