Microsoft Gives Up in IM Battle with AOL

from the too-bad dept

One of the most heated discussions on Techdirt involved AOL's blocking of Microsoft's instant messaging software back in July. Now, MS has given up and says they won't try to have their software communicate with AOL's software. I understand the arguments that people made in favor of AOL's position, but I still think this is a loss to the community at large, as we still have a bunch of differrent, competing IM products that can't talk to one another. Maybe I'm being naive and MS would have simply taken everything over (as they've been known to do) but at least everyone could communicate.
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