Trying to connect you

摘要

Communicating quickly is what instant messaging is supposed to be all about. But AOL is said to be making connecting harder, by stalling efforts to create open standards for this increasingly popular form of online communication so that competing services can connect with its own, which dominates the market. The issue has caused uproar for almost a year. Last week, it hit the headlines again. First, it was reported that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is examining AOL'S behaviour as part of its review of the online giant's $230 billion merger with Time Warner. Then AOL submitted a proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force, a standards body, outlining how it thought different instant messaging services could eventually connect with each other. Unfortunately for AOL, the row (combined with a successful hacker attack on the company's network) even overshadowed the launch of AOL TV, a service linking television sets to the Internet.