4 ms·

Some useful history, the AOL/MSN chat wars: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ AOL f

Some useful history, the AOL/MSN chat wars: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ AOL finally "won" that one by making a buffer exploit in their own client part of the required protocol. Later a court required them to allow messaging interop (as part of the Time Warner merger). They never implemented it.

altintx 3y ago
That story has been playing on loop in a dark corner of my brain the last few days. It's as close to an identical circumstance as I can imagine.
jorvi 3y ago
Did AOL really win in the end though? My youth was in the late 90s and 2000s and I don’t know a single soul that used AOL, ICQ, or Yahoo. I imagine all of them must have been hoping for the reverse at that point, access to MSN.
- hattmall 3y ago
  Everybody was on all three for me. That being AIM and ICQ then later MSN. I don't remember much Yahoo messenger usage, just gaming on Yahoo, but everyone was on ICQ.
- chankstein38 3y ago
  Yeah, what? I grew up (in the same era) using AIM and Yahoo, ICQ was a little before my prime. Everyone I talk to about those days used them as well. MSN was fine but AIM and Yahoo were where it was at for the bulk of my early years of instant messaging with friends. At one point a friend even made me an AIM account because I was using MSN and they wanted to chat with me but didn't want to do it through MSN. Obviously just 1 anecdote but I just wanted to share that my experience and your experience were dramatically different.
  - jorvi 3y ago
    Perhaps it’s geographically correlated, I’m from The Netherlands, which would be West+Central Europe in terms of cultural zeitgeist. Would map neatly to the iMessage / WhatsApp divide too, if for different reasons.
    - ftmch 3y ago
      Also from NL, was using ICQ at first then everyone switched to MSN. I do remember using AIM a little bit to chat with some Americans. This was the late 90's.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    Like today, it was highly regional. The talk about Beeper Mini sounds ridiculous in the UK because literally nobody uses iMessage. IIRC AIM was popular in America and MSN was popular in Europe.
    - felideon 3y ago
      Correct. Same with South America: everyone used MSN Messenger.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      Plenty of people implicitly (and likely unknowingly) use iMessage in the UK, because iPhones are quite popular here. But indeed no one uses it for group chats. That's what WhatsApp is for.
  - clwg 3y ago
    Back then the networks weren't so locked down to the clients, so it wasn't as big of an issue to have friends on various networks either. I have to call out IRC too. I definitely look back on those as the "good old days" of chat.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Especially with software like Miranda IM or Trillian, you didn't have to care which network your friends were on, you just had the one client.
- manmal 3y ago
  My friends were all on ICQ and MSN, ca 2001-2007 was when I heavily used those.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Y!M was used by niches as is Telegram to Discord, I found. Unless you actually sign up you tend not to find anyone using it. But when you do, it all appears out of nowhere. Same as when you buy a car and suddenly everyone has the same colour/model. I used Y!M for NeoPets stuff when I was 14, and MSN for school but never ICQ or AIM. Those time's were specially magical.
- aflag 3y ago
  In the US everyone used AIM, in Brazil everyone used MSN. Never met anyone using yahoo. ICQ was big before that (mid-90s).
- nerdix 3y ago
  You must have been very young in the 90s because AOL dominated the late 90s. And it carried over into the early 00s with AIM even as people started to drop AOL as an ISP. MSN was more of mid-00s thing. The 90s were all AOL though. I knew people who used ICQ (it was definitely more of a nerd thing) and Yahoo Messenger too.
doublerabbit 3y ago
Thank you. I've been needing to read something retro like that for a while now. You scratches that itch.
Sephr 3y ago
Clients could probably hook/trap a fake buffer exploit for protocol compatibility without the security concerns. This ends up becoming a game of cat and mouse resulting in even more intricate technical workarounds and hacks.
- nojs 3y ago
  That would be pretty hard in general because you’d have to read the code they sent and figure out what’s safe to execute.

altintx 3y ago

That story has been playing on loop in a dark corner of my brain the last few days. It's as close to an identical circumstance as I can imagine.

jorvi 3y ago

Did AOL really win in the end though? My youth was in the late 90s and 2000s and I don’t know a single soul that used AOL, ICQ, or Yahoo. I imagine all of them must have been hoping for the reverse at that point, access to MSN.

hattmall 3y ago
Everybody was on all three for me. That being AIM and ICQ then later MSN. I don't remember much Yahoo messenger usage, just gaming on Yahoo, but everyone was on ICQ.
chankstein38 3y ago
Yeah, what? I grew up (in the same era) using AIM and Yahoo, ICQ was a little before my prime. Everyone I talk to about those days used them as well. MSN was fine but AIM and Yahoo were where it was at for the bulk of my early years of instant messaging with friends. At one point a friend even made me an AIM account because I was using MSN and they wanted to chat with me but didn't want to do it through MSN. Obviously just 1 anecdote but I just wanted to share that my experience and your experience were dramatically different.
- jorvi 3y ago
  Perhaps it’s geographically correlated, I’m from The Netherlands, which would be West+Central Europe in terms of cultural zeitgeist. Would map neatly to the iMessage / WhatsApp divide too, if for different reasons.
  - ftmch 3y ago
    Also from NL, was using ICQ at first then everyone switched to MSN. I do remember using AIM a little bit to chat with some Americans. This was the late 90's.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  Like today, it was highly regional. The talk about Beeper Mini sounds ridiculous in the UK because literally nobody uses iMessage. IIRC AIM was popular in America and MSN was popular in Europe.
  - felideon 3y ago
    Correct. Same with South America: everyone used MSN Messenger.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    Plenty of people implicitly (and likely unknowingly) use iMessage in the UK, because iPhones are quite popular here. But indeed no one uses it for group chats. That's what WhatsApp is for.
- clwg 3y ago
  Back then the networks weren't so locked down to the clients, so it wasn't as big of an issue to have friends on various networks either. I have to call out IRC too. I definitely look back on those as the "good old days" of chat.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Especially with software like Miranda IM or Trillian, you didn't have to care which network your friends were on, you just had the one client.
manmal 3y ago
My friends were all on ICQ and MSN, ca 2001-2007 was when I heavily used those.
doublerabbit 3y ago
Y!M was used by niches as is Telegram to Discord, I found. Unless you actually sign up you tend not to find anyone using it. But when you do, it all appears out of nowhere. Same as when you buy a car and suddenly everyone has the same colour/model. I used Y!M for NeoPets stuff when I was 14, and MSN for school but never ICQ or AIM. Those time's were specially magical.
aflag 3y ago
In the US everyone used AIM, in Brazil everyone used MSN. Never met anyone using yahoo. ICQ was big before that (mid-90s).
nerdix 3y ago
You must have been very young in the 90s because AOL dominated the late 90s. And it carried over into the early 00s with AIM even as people started to drop AOL as an ISP. MSN was more of mid-00s thing. The 90s were all AOL though. I knew people who used ICQ (it was definitely more of a nerd thing) and Yahoo Messenger too.

doublerabbit 3y ago

Thank you. I've been needing to read something retro like that for a while now. You scratches that itch.

Sephr 3y ago

Clients could probably hook/trap a fake buffer exploit for protocol compatibility without the security concerns. This ends up becoming a game of cat and mouse resulting in even more intricate technical workarounds and hacks.

nojs 3y ago
That would be pretty hard in general because you’d have to read the code they sent and figure out what’s safe to execute.