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Rivals unite against AOL
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July 25, 2000: 8:51 a.m. ET
Microsoft, AT&T, others combine to force instant messaging access
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Some of the biggest names in the Internet sector have called a détente in their rivalry and banded together to take on a common foe: America Online and its dominance of instant messaging technology.
The coalition, IMUnified, includes Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates), AT&T (T: Research, Estimates), Excite@Home, Yahoo! (YHOO: Research, Estimates), Prodigy (PRGY: Research, Estimates), Phone.com (PHCM: Research, Estimates), Odigo, Tribal Voice and iCast. The group's mission is provide instant messaging (IM) interoperability standards that will allow users to send messages to one another regardless of their IM provider.
AOL (AOL: Research, Estimates) has cornered the market in IM technology with an estimated 90 percent market share, and it allows only registered users to communicate over its network. Competitors have criticized the Web powerhouse for not allowing open IM access for seamless communication. AOL also is in the process of merging with Time Warner, the parent of CNNfn.
 "You can pick up the telephone and call anybody in the world, no matter who your phone service provider is. And you can e-mail anyone, no matter which e-mail application you use. But you can't send or receive instant messages to anybody, anywhere, because instant messaging is not yet fully interoperable," IMUnified said.
The group also is looking ahead to the emergence of wireless IM technology, and predicts that millions of additional IM users will take advantage of messaging each other via cell phones or personal devices.
IMUnified plans to release an initial plan for the exchange of IM among its members in August, with a final plan in the works by the end of the year.
AOL and Time Warner are undergoing a review of their intended union by the Federal Trade Commission (FCC), and hearings are expected to continue this week. Last month, AOL submitted a draft of an IM open access proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an industry technology standards group.
In Monday trading, AOL closed down 1-1/2 at 56-1/8. 
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