This is an article from InternetNews.com on the <A HREF="http://www.internetnews.com/prod-news/article/0,1087,9_171811,00.html">instant messaging</A> wars. The article says that executives from Excite@Home, Microsoft, Activerse, Tribal Voice , Prodigy Communications, Yahoo!, AT&T and Infoseek asked AOL to make its instant messaging servers open to other vendors.