AOL to Offer Compatible Instant Messaging Soon

from the sure... dept

Now that the FTC is looking at AOL, they claim they are going to set up standards for instant messaging that will allow different IM systems to communicate with each other. Of course, other companies have tried to do that, but AOL has blocked them all out. There are some amusing quotes in there about how this is a really tricky problem, and basically blaming spam and everything bad on email because it wasn't designed in the careful way that AOL is going to design the instant messaging standard.