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America Online learns its p.r. lessons quickly. Even as it continues to deny competitors such as Microsoft, Tribal Voice and Odigo (blocked, Odigo says, six times in the past two weeks) access to its teeming Instant Messaging network, the online giant floated a proposal that would throw open the doors. Politically, the proposal is perfect for softening the scowl of trustbusters eyeing the AOL-Time Warner merger, and it's also very handy technically in that it doesn't offer any details whatsoever on how outside linkups would be allowed. That, according to AOL, is a security issue...
...things its 90 million registered users (who exchange 651 million messages a day) cherish about IM is that it's unadulterated by the viral threats and cybercrap that litter their traditional e-mail accounts. AOL's proposal, besides being in the play-nice-with-Washington mold that Microsoft eschewed to its peril, has the added advantage of being utterly theoretical for the foreseeable future. Said IETF co-chairman Vijay Saraswat, whose group has been mulling instant-messaging standards proposals for two years: "It will provide a lot of food for thought." Sounds like AOL's stranglehold is safe...
Until now, America Online has escaped the kind of scrutiny that has left its nemesis, Microsoft, writhing in the clutches of the courts. That could be about to change, as the Internet giant finds itself under the microscopes of the ounce-of-prevention trustbusters over its purchase of Time Warner. And the feds are giving Steve Case some hints as to how a tech behemoth should act. Lesson 1, according to Wednesday's Wall Street Journal: Instant Messaging, the real-time, buddy-listed way to chat online that's more popular with teenagers than 'N Sync and is widely expected...
...Lessig had his say anyway. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Feb. 1, he argued that Microsoft broke antitrust law by bundling Windows and Internet Explorer. Jackson leaned on Lessig's opinion in his landmark ruling against the company...
...Lessig's Microsoft brief made him famous, but he's not resting on his laurels. Last month he told The New York Times that the pending AOL-Time Warner merger makes him "deeply, deeply pessimistic." Steve Case and Gerald Levin couldn't be blamed if they're feeling nervous...