America Online apparently returned fire in the war over messaging clients, blockading Microsoft users from accessing its service.
Early Friday, users of Microsoft's new service were unable to access America Online's Instant Messenger (AIM). The portal had blocked access to its AIM servers in an unfortunate move, said Rob Bennett, group product manager for Microsoft's consumer and commerce group.
"I don't think they've talked to us about it. I think they just went ahead and did it. We're going to work vigorously to restore interoperability," said Bennett. The change prevented MSN users from connecting with the AOL service via the new MSN Messenger.
MSN Messenger is the company's first entry into an already popular category of messaging services.
Yahoo, AOL, and Excite all offer instant messaging within their spate of Internet mail and chat services. Instant messaging amounts to a kind of live email. Users can summon each other instantly and exchange messages in real time. It's similar to open chat rooms on the Net, but is specific to two or more acquainted users.
Until recently, however, users have had to belong to the same service to send each other instant messages.
Citing the convenience of interoperability among services, Microsoft built MSN Messenger so that users could access AOL Instant Messenger accounts. Yahoo on Wednesday released beta software that added AIM compatibility.
The advantage of having access to AIM is not insignificant -- it has an enormous user base built partly via acquisition of AOL predecessor ICQ.
But following the release of MSN's new service Thursday, AOL cried foul, claiming that existing AIM users had to switch to the new Microsoft service in order to achieve the cross-service capability.
Associated Press reported that AOL complained that MSN Messenger raised serious privacy concerns in its access to the AIM service, apparently because it directly handles AIM user names and passwords.
