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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: taxman who wrote (27273)	7/24/1999 5:45:00 PM
From: RTev	Respond to of 74651

AOL's response to the instant messenger competition shows how uncomfortable AOL is with the notion of the internet -- with standard ways of communicating open to anyone on the big net. This news.com story focuses on the standards battle part of the spat: news.com Sanford, of Microsoft, said the software giant's efforts for a standard is akin to Web users being able to email everyone regardless of who manufactured their email software. "Today, it doesn't matter if you're using AOL NetMail or Microsoft Exchange. All that matters is we can send email back and forth. And we want to get to the same point with instant messaging," Sanford said. AOL, however, said Microsoft's standards push is merely a smokescreen. Of course it's a smokescreen. Microsoft rarely embraces open standards unless its in their interest to do so. A good line in that article: "The bottom line is the challenging vendor always likes standards the best, and the entrenched vendor tends to fight standards to maintain its dominance," he said. Microsoft has learned over the years how to use standards to its great advantage. It's a lesson that AOL has not learned so well. We'll probably see many more battles like this one in the future as others try to emulate AOL and return to a modified 80s model of closed systems that allow communication only with others who subscribe to the same system. But this skirmish will no doubt show how inappropriate the AOL model is for the internet. From a Washington Post story on the subject: Industry analyst Enderle predicted that ultimately AOL will decide to embrace a system of open standards in which everyone's messaging software can connect. Under such a scenario, AOL would hope to remain the dominant player by virtue of the lengthy lead it enjoys today. "They don't want to risk getting outflanked by Microsoft," he said. "This is too big of a market to lose." washingtonpost.com