>What's the point of creating an "open" protocol, when AOL has already opened theirs? ICQ, of course is totally stupid, lagged, and insecure. I was glad to hear that AOL bought them out...maybe it will add some of the AOL stability to it.
From http://www.linux-mag.com/id/902/ :
But AOL has always been adamant about not wanting their users’ screen names and their passwords going through any software that’s not controlled by them. It’s an understandable position. I don’t know if it gives them the right to try as hard as they do to block everybody.
From https://nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ :
AOL was causing the client to look up a particular address in memory and send it back to the server. This was tricky, vastly trickier than anything they’d done so far. It was also a bit outside the realm of fair play: exploiting a security hole in their own client that our client didn’t have!
And they even used trademarks on terms like "instant messenger" and "buddy list" to fight competition: https://www.wired.com/1999/05/does-aol-own-buddy-list/