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AOL vs. Trillian
Posted by
michael
on Thu Jan 31, 2002 10:48 AM
from the talk-is-cheap dept.
from the talk-is-cheap dept.
Trinition writes: "ZDNews is reporting that AOL is once again trying to shut out the competition. Trillian has been updated twice in the past 24 hours to work around the blocks AOL is throwing up to prevent the popular IM client from interoperating with the AOL Instant Messenger service. Will Cerulean Studios hold up better than those they follow in the footsteps of (i.e. Microsoft, AT&T and Jabber)?"
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Fire! (Score:5, Informative)
Seems to me that all this extra programming is wasted cycles that could be better used for additional features for applications.
This is one area where greed is holding back innovation in the IM market.
Re:Fire! (Score:5, Interesting)
-Benjamin Meyer
Parent
Why the moaning? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why the moaning? (Score:2)
but they don't want just that...they *want* you to use their network...*but only* with their client. It's a simple matter of protecting their revenue stream....or in this case, potential revenue stream.
Re:Why the moaning? (Score:5, Informative)
1. They added an overlay protocol, TIC-TOC, to allow interoperability (although, very limited, and not kept up-to-date).
2. The FCC ordered them to demonstrate iteroperability. They chose their victim.. I mean, partner, to be some dot-com that is now bankrupt and defunct (nice loop-hole spotting, AOL!). I'm trying to find links on this to back this up, and I'll post them here when I find them (just couldn't let this go unanswered).
3. AOL accepts e-mail from non-AOL SMTP servers. These e-mails traverse the AOL network, tying up their resources, and ultimately being converted into some AOL format for display in AOL. Why don't they block that? Oh, because it adds value to AOL by allowing its users to interoperate with the rest of the world. The difference with IM is that AOL owns 90% of that world (ICQ & AOL), so they don't see any value added.
Parent
Re:Why the moaning? (Score:5, Informative)
Keep looking because you are wrong. Here is a link [net4tv.com]. The FCC only forces them to demonstrate interoperability of advanced IM services which includes Video conferencing and the such. Nothing was set about regular IM. Of course, this agreement lasts for only 5 years and can change at any time.
Parent
Re:Why the moaning? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly my point. AOL doesn't have a monopoly on e-mail users, so they allow interoperability. Its adds value to their service, so their users have good reason to stick around.
If AOL *didn't* have a monopoly on IM users, they would have their own service interoperating with the monopolistic ones (provided those hypotheitical monopolists would permit it). But AOL *does* have a monopoly on IM users (AIM and ICQ combined are HUGE), so they're going to be stubborn and lock out the competition.
Maybe not in the legal dictionary, but in my dictionary, this is *anti-competitive* and I want to see something done about it. I just hope someone with more legal knowledge than I can find the proper legal support to put this fight upon.
Parent
They can always try. (Score:2)
Of course, thats not really the issue here. But its better they do it this way than sue competitors. Not to say thats not an option they're reserving for the future.
-Restil
Advertisements (Score:5, Insightful)
They have to make money in order to pay for the services, and Trillian is taking a small piece of that away. Right or wrong, AOL is doing what's in their best interests.
Re:Advertisements (Score:3, Insightful)
They have to make money in order to pay for the services, and the VCR is taking a small piece of that away. Right or wrong, ABC/CBS/NBC is doing what's in their best interests.
Re:Advertisements (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Advertisements (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, when you're watching TV, and a commercial comes on, you usually change the channel, or run to the bathroom, or the kitchen, or something, right? You don't sit there, dutifully watching the advertising, because you feel some obligation to "pay" for your show, right?
Trillian does what IM does, and it does it better. Bottom line. I know that AOL doesn't like it, but, instead of trying to stomp on Trillian, maybe AOL should notice that lots of users are taking advantage of what Trillian offers, and actually compete with Trillian, by writing software that does a similar thing, and letting the market decide what's going to be used, and what's going to be the Atari 7800.
I know this won't happen, but I'm just saying.
And as far as the ads go, when I still used IM (before switching to Trillian), I altered my config files so I wouldn't see the ads, anyway. I thought everyone did that.
Parent
Re:Advertisements (Score:4, Insightful)
1. A lot of corporations realize IM is here to stay. They might be willing to pay outright for an ad-free version (perhaps even branded), but AOL isn't offering one. Why? Are they too short-sighted to see it?
2. For lots of folks, including myself, its not the ads that bother me, its their development path. I'd like to see some useful features (like aliasing a buddy name so its meaningful instead of Fooboo24). I'd also like to see less bloat (rate your buddy, play games, buddy icons, etc.).
Trillian is not intended as a way to steal money from AOL (notice that Trillian is free to download and use?). It's an alternative with a lot of features that, apparently, people *do* want. AOL could truly squash Trillian if they adopted their features instead of this crap they're pulling now. Heck, why not just *BUY* Cerulean studios?
Parent
Advertisements not as important to AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
User base is worth more than revenue to AOL right now. Just like the way it is with MSIE.
Only Trillian v0.7x affected? (Score:5, Informative)
One interesting thing is that the new AIM blocks only seem to affect Trillian v0.7x - some of our users still using v0.6x are still working fine, whereas us early adopters are having to update rapidly.
Luckily, the newest (v0.721) build includes an auto update function, so keeping up to date is likely to be much easier in the future. Bear in mind that there's a limit to how much AOL can do to break the protocols, as they don't want to shut out all of their previous clients.
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those ads are what pay for the servers, the infrastructure, the maintenance and enhancement of the software, etc. If you are using the service without the ads, you're getting a free ride on all the people who do use the service as intended.
Why do you think TiVo doesn't let you completely strip away ads and watch programmes seamlessly? Because without ad revenue there are no programmes, at least not on non-PPV channels. The TV companies know this, and the enlightened consumer knows it too.
IMHO, this is all about a minority of users wanting free beer, and dressing it up in free speech rhetoric. Don't forget that ICQ was a small company once... if you really need IM functionality and don't want to use a commercial service... implement your own for internal use.
Parent
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected? (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. For me, and I suspect this is true of the majority of Trillian users, it comes down to the number of clients running. I've got a pretty quick Windows box, but I tend to stress it pretty much every day. I also happen to have some old friends on ICQ, several cousins, friends, and my sister on AIM, and a college roommate on MSN. No one will switch, and I can't run three clients all day every day. Hence, Trillian. Now, I don't really care if it shows ads or not; that had nothing to do with my decision. If AOL will come out with a client that can talk to MSN and ICQ, fine, I'll probably go back (they need to work on their logging, too).
This isn't about free beer or free speech. It's about free RAM and free processor cycles.
-db
The part that really sucks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh well.. I'm glad I signed up for MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger and use trillian for both of those too..
To answer your question (Score:2)
I am not making a comment on the fairness of the practice here, just stating the reality of the situation.
Smoke screen (Score:2, Informative)
Someone though AOL was on a mission. He even showed a screen shot that showed the uninstall icon for AIM being a crossed out trillian icon. Too bad he didn't realize that that icon was some kind of bug, cuz my uninstall icon was a vncviewer icon. GO figure.
But the fix for that second day was to go back to an even older version of trillian. Now cerulean just released one that works now without having to go back to an older version.
Some people just seemed to jump the gun a little I think.
Then again.. maybe AOL does have it in for them. Either way the cerulean guys are doing a great job!
Trillian is the best thing since sliced bread (Score:2)
Trillian is a simple, small and pretty customizeable app that takes my start bar from 5 icons down to one and manages my history, chats and everything with one app.
It will be AOL's loss if they get rid of a chunk of people on the network. How it can be a security risk is beyond me. You have to signup the same way and access the same network, is AOL just so inept it doesn't know how to write a secure im client?
Oh well. Maybe it is time to sue AOL for having a monopoly and waiving its monopolostic powers over IM technology. Don't they own ICQ, don't they Own AIM? Doesn't owning that much marketshare and preventing other users from using such technology constitute a monopoly using its powers to prevent other business from competing in the market?
Oh well. trillian is great, i wish them the best of luck sneaking around IM's / AOL's policies.
As a Trillian and AIM user... (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in July there was a story about AOL saying they were working on letting AIM access other messaging clients [slashdot.org]. I guess it's ok for AIM to access Yahoo/MS/etc buddy lists but it's not ok for another app to access the AIM servers. Nice double standard there AOL. (Apparently they want Open Standards for Instant Messaging to apply to everyone but them.)
Why is this so wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
PR spinning (Score:4, Funny)
Sometimes you have to just sit back and admire the pr spins people can put on an issue. Since Sept.11 the security issue is a no brainer. However, the system hacking aspect is just above and beyond. Kathy recognizes that one can use enough half-truths to defend her statements that trillian is hacking into AIM servers. It's absolutely amazing how such blatant blocking of a service can spun so effectively. AOL gets some kudos from me on reminding us here on just how evil they can be. It's completely deceptive and underhanded, and yet completely unprovable to any but the technically literate.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist. -Verbal Kint
I don't understand... (Score:3)
It has nothing to do with AOL being predatory (as mentioned in the article) or "selfish" (also mentioned in the article). It has everything to do with AOL protecting the resources that it, as a corporation, owns.
How Are the Changes Being Made? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would hope that whatever they're doing the clues as to what the next change might be are already there in the client. Perhaps we could build a fake ICQ server and run tests on the AOL client with slightly modified protocols to see what it supports. Then build in the same support into Trillian et al.
For me I'd love to stop using AOL's ICQ since I use OS X. The official client doesn't behave at all like a good OS X app should.
Re:How Are the Changes Being Made? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't work for AOL or CeruleanStudios, so what I'm stating here are my asumptions.
I think that the first thing that AOL did was to analyze the data. If they found a Trillian SecrureIM package, then disconnect the user. This is why disabling SecureIM solved the problem at first.
I'm not sure what happened in the second step, but one theory is that they started checking the version number submitted in the Authentication request(or something similar).
Right now, Trillian seems to be working (Version 0.721). However, I believe that AIM has a CRC capability. The server will send a CRC request to the client with an offset and a length argument. The client will CRC the number of bytes specified by length starting from the specified offset, and send back the result. If the CRC doesn't match, then disconnect the user. It would be very hard to reverse-engineer the CRC algorithm. I believe that this is how Jabber was stopped in the end.
Parent
Re:How Are the Changes Being Made? (Score:3, Informative)
Incorrect. The current jabber AIM-transport works on the basis of the server operators putting the AIM binaries somewhere the transport can see it. It then calculates checksums off ot that.
AOL has been blocking AIM and ICQ traffic from jabber servers simply by blocking their IP's.
They're not preventing AIM integration (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, flame me because:
1) TOC doesn't have all the features of OSCAR
2) TOC (might) use more resources than OSCAR on AOL's side, so you're doing them a favor.
3) AOL's required by the court to let us play in their sandbox.
4) AOL's a big bully.
5) Information wants to be free, man!
If AOL wants to make a subset of the features available to 3rd party clients, it's their prerogative. They own the servers, they wrote the service, they pay for the people to maintain the servers. And if TOC uses more resources than OSCAR on AOL's servers (which is just a rumor, and not confirmed from anyone with any authority), that's AOL's business, not yours. And no, AOL is not required by any court to let 3rd party clients play with AIM. They're only required to make the "next generation" AIM available to 3rd parties.
If you use OSCAR to connect to AIM and you don't use AOL's clients to do it, you don't get to complain when they change OSCAR around, regardless of whether they're deliberately blocking someone or just making modifications to the protocol for something else. Use TOC, or use another IM service.
-Todd
AIM service does some things *right* (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried ICQ, but AIM does at least two things better:
* the ICQ UI is a horrendous mess. AIM has a good, simple UI. Cleaner in many ways then the Trillian version I used. And as the release new versions of the AIM client, whenever they change default behaviors (like minimizing to task bar vs system tray, etc) they're very good at letting users get the old behavior back in the options menu.
* I have never received AIM spam, but those two weeks of ICQ were nothing but teen porn ads. I'm not sure if its ICQ numbering scheme that makes it so spam prone, or something AIM does better
There are somethings AIM doesn't do, like my friend pointed out ICQ has a cool autolog of conversations feature, but overall, AIM is a
good little client, other clients could take a few pages from its usability book.
Jabber (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently they notice when hundreds of client connections are coming off one IP Address, no problems.
lets make something clear (Score:5, Interesting)
Since I signed up with a user name on AIM they make money off of me. They use me as a resource to fund their activities therefore I will use them as a resource for mine. If through my choice of clients I consume more resources than they gain from me then it's time for them to look at a different business model. The last time I looked the majority ad on AIM was still for AOL's own over priced service. I did not, upon signing up with AIM, agree to use a particular client to consume said resource therefore they should not block me from use because of my choice. Saying that there is no "business relationship" makes it appear that AOL wants one, this is not the case as has been proven time and time again. AOL does not want business relationships that will do nothing to further their capture of market share.
Re:lets make something clear (Score:3)
A lot of faulty arguments... (Score:3)
Not true. Advertising agencies take into account the number of active users. In addition, if an ad agency finds that less and less people are going to be using AIM (therefore less people actually viewing their ad), they would not pay as much. Think of it this way..there are going to be a couple million people watching TV on Super Bowl Sunday. Would you pay $1.5 million to advertise on PBS, who won't be showing the super bowl? That's the same logic in this case of Trillian vs AIM.
Again, another misconception. IANAL. AOL and AIM is a closed system. It is illegal for anybody or any group of people to intrude onto a closed system. AOL owns the servers, networks, etc to run this, why must they allow other people to use it for free? The reason they don't take them to court is 1) bad publicity. Anytime anybody is suing an underdog, it gets them bad publicity. Think of it this way, you and a couple million open source users would be pissed off at AOL if they were to sue Jabber (an open source IM client). They would be viewed as the RIAA of the IM world. 2) Litigations costs a lot of money and time. As a company (regardless of the size) time and money are two essential resources that can disappear rapidly. In the time that they put into this, something new might pop up and now their number 1 position fades to #3.
Again another falsehood. Under DMCA, reverse engineering a system is illegal. Look at Sony vs Modchip [slashdot.org] or Reverse Engineer of Adobe PDF [slashdot.org] or Sony Aibo vs Hackers [slashdot.org] or the DVD decryption... All of these were reverse engineering for interoperability.
AOL has a choice of doing something against a rival or not. It is the same as a police officer letting some speeders go without giving them a ticket. For them to go after EVERYONE would turn them more and more into RIAA.
"hacking" has a wide range of meanings. Again, I responded to the legal aspect above.
If this were true, Trillian could sue AOL. But instead of following the legal route, they are trying to do this through the backdoor. What you are saying is that Trillian is taking the law into their own hands. It is the same as shooting a thief instead of reporting it to the police.
The underlying fact is that, AIM belongs to AOL, they can choose who or what can use it. There is no law saying that any vendor must sell to everyone. The part about the security concern is this [my personal analysis] if I were to build a aim client put it out on the net for everyone to use, but hide a password sniffer in there, this creates a major vulnerability to the AOL system. Some AIM users are also AOL users. I could then access AOL using their account.
Quite true...I agree with you on this fact.
This is false. Any company can limit the amount of resources that you use. For example, there are FAP limits for cable modems and broadband. In addition, an "all you can eat" buffet is legally allowed to kick you out once you consume to much of their food (resources).
That is the exact definition of a business relationship. A company makes a business relationship so that it could make more money for itself. It's a fact. Companies aren't out there to save the world, companies sole purpose to to make a profit. This is a fact that a lot of times the people discussing business practices often miss. We often put ourselves in a idealized world where everyone helps out each other. In a capitalistic society that is not what the society is about. If you are looking for an environment where there is a fair sharing of profits where companies don't seek profits but to do some good, this is the socialist ideals at its core. Computer programmers and hackers alike from the very beginning have always been in a mindset of creating something for the shear joy of it and to help out the world. That is what drives many of us. In the past, there was very little profit to be made. Howerver, in the last couple of years, MBAs and marketting teams have taken over the industry. We are now subjected to their goals.
Now, again, I'm not bashing Trillian. I've been a long time trillian user. But it is hard to argue against facts of the law and facts of corporate/business world.
The IM world is a damn mess... (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine incompatible e-mail clients, online services, DNS, news, etc...
Instant Messaging should be decentralized. This is what happens when commercial interests drive communication "standards" over the net.
Remember pre-popular-internet when mail programs wouldn't talk to each other? Exchange, cc:mail, lotus notes, and a host of others? Remember early online services that didn't permit access to content outside their worlds? MSN, AOL, Compuserve, Genie, etc...?
There should be an RFC, each ISP or provider should host their own IM server, their customers connect to it using the client of their choice, and outsiders send messages in for instant delivery based on a standard naming convention.
But we'll never get there now, it's too late. I'm just thankful the rest of the net isn't in this mess.
AOL's "OpenIM" response (Score:3, Informative)
http://aim.aol.com/openim/ [aol.com]
The core issue... (Score:3)
IM is really nice, and is basic infrastructure at many organizations. As a freelance programmer, I've focused on Yahoo I/M for my I/M needs 'cause there's a decent Linux client.
But the core issue is that there is no real standard for IM chatting! In the absence of a real standard, ICQ/AIM have taken force.
Jabber might get there, eventually. Who has submitted the jabber reference to the IETF/IEEE to make it a standard?
What we need is a IETF/IEEE standard. One that is distributed. Reliable. Cross platform. Based on XML or other widely acceptable format.
I suggest using a topology much like POP3/SMTP. Your ISP should provide IM service so that other IM clients can resolve you by your email address.
DNS records would contain an "IM" record along with "MX", etc.
Include PKI so that you can have "secure" connections that do not go thru a central server, and business will jump all over it since existing IM clients are unencrypted and therefore very insecure.
Utilizing openssl and other standard libraries, I bet 2 or 3 qualified programmers could come up with a functional reference in a few weeks.
So, why hasn't this been done?
Re:Yeah.... riiiiight... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Funny)
Now, I disagree. Remember the Microsoft Antitrust case? I think we all saw how the little guy won that one.
Re:Way to go AOL (Score:5, Informative)
they spent R&D money developing AIM, testing it, promoting it, upgrading it, etc. why in the hell should they be forced to open it up to people who want to piggyback on it? that's total and utter bullshit, and one of the things i can't stand about the slashdot crowd. .
gotta have everything, who cares if they spent a chunk of change and man-hours working on it, i want it, so it should be free and everyone should be able to use it.
Parent
Re:Way to go AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Monopoly status isn't defined as 100% market share - essentially it's a market share so big that the monopoly has the power to dictate to the market instead of the other way around. Instead of consumer need controlling the market, the supplier leaves the consumer with a "take it or leave it" proposition.
With a secure monopoly, AOL can tell everyone - you have the right to use IM, which you need to stay in touch (they say), but you have to use our cheesy clients and you have to expose yourself to all of our advertisements (especially for AOLTimeWarner subsidiaries).
Do you know that 80% of the celebraties featured on the AOL and Compuserve splash pages are AOLTimeWarner products?
The open source counter to this is "let's make our own IM system". This is great, but if it cannot interface with the AOL IM system, then it's back to the old Microsoft technique of "Buy Office, or forget about reading the documents produced by the people who do buy Office."
Ermm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
On the one had I agree that Trillion should keep trying. That way more attention can be shed on just how childish this company can be and how if they react this way to IM clients, how will they react on larger issues that affect the public?
Conversely, why use up all of your resources reinventing somebody else's wheel?
Trillian provides encryption (Score:3, Informative)
I support the Trillian coders, and encourage others to do the same. I think it's deplorable the way AOL 'shifts' its attitude whenever it suits: When they wanted to expand their user base, and feared the big, scary 'internet', they integrated standard protocols etc into their closed dialup service. When they wanted to gain a foothold in the IM mindshare war, they allowed non-AOL users to use their IM service. Now that they ARE the leading IM service (and bought the #2), it's suddenly THEIR network, THEIR protocol; how dare you use a client that doesn't generate ad revenue for them?
The fact that they cater to the computer neophytes and Luddites only complicates the issue. Joe geek can download and learn any program he wants to so he can IM Grandma, but there's no way you're gonna get Grandma to try out a cool new IM system because AOL is Evil and throwing around its muscle.
When the AOL-Time-Warner-MegaCorp merger happened, I thought the forced opening of their networks might lead to other regulated use of systems in their control. I'm so naive.
Re:A matter of security?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Boycotting AOL (Score:2)
Does that make any sense? (Score:2)
This is a rather nasty quandry. The people who run the servers that all of this traffic goes over need to fund those servers somehow. If they leave the protocol open to everybody and don't have some way to force through advertisements, how do they pay for it? I like using Trillian, and Gaim (depending on what OS I'm dealing with), but I can see AOL's point.
Re:Are their servers anyway. (Score:3, Insightful)
After all these years of being "connected" to the Internet, it looks like they still don't "get it."
Re:Are their servers anyway. (Score:2)
Slashdot.org is also concerned about ad revenues... one of the big reasons they've given for not having a usenet feed of the comments here is that they wouldn't be able to pay for the cost of those users' network and computer usage.
It's not evil to want to be able to at least break even on a service you're providing.
Re:Are their servers anyway. (Score:3, Informative)
Just my $.02...I use Trillian as well, specifically for the reason that another user stated above. I have friends that use Yahoo, some on MSN, lots on IM, and a few on ICQ.
ALSO, Trillian supports 128-bit end-to-end encryption (Blowfish) for the AOL and ICQ protocols, which is something that no one else does. I would think that the privacy freaks (myself included) would grab it just for that.
Re:What AOL should do... (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies like AOL spend billions a year on getting their name out there. One of the ways to get your companies name out there is Branding. You want your name all over your product and you want you product to get in front of as many faces as often as you can and branding is gonna be a big part of this for them.
Let's say that Trillian (*yay Go Trillian*) stands unobstructed, it's a better client than aim, it's more useful to a LOT of people and has some really nice functionality not offered by AIM. So everyone starts using it. (except for AOL users) All of a sudden there's no more AIM on everyones boxes, no more AOL banners, AOL tracking, AOL propaganda. The most valuable feature to them of their IM client is the fact that they get to spatter their name on everyones desktops.
Most everyone I know, knows what AIM is even if they don't use it. AOL isn't about to gonna give up their userbase's clients to a third party that's gonna advertise them at the same level as icq, yahoo and msn. all of a sudden they're left holding the login bag without branding or advertisement sales.
they spent the money and devd the servers, they spent the $$ and devd the clients, they should have the right not to have outside programs connect to the server and use their resources for free if they choose not to.
but also notice that the aim client is very stale, no decent changes in years, they own aol and icq, you'd expect that it would not kill them to make a client that wraps aim and icq together if a user chooses to do so? If their product wasn't obviously lacking, Trillian would not be able to get a foothold as easily on the market.
I'll sit back and root for Trillian 'till the cows come home' but i expeect that they'll eventually get beat down. AOL is tough competition, and they take their rights seriously.
Wonder how long it will be until someone comes up with a client that attaches to oscar through the AIM client program itself to connect in?