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Juno, NetZero To Merge Into 2nd-Largest ISP
elliotc writes: "As free Internet access comes to an end, the last remaining players, Juno and NetZero, are uniting (no pun intended) to form United Online. The combined company hopes to stay alive in the face of AOL, MSN, and Earthlink and to further marginalize smaller companies."
... And not a day goes by that the person on the other end of the phone doesn't have Juno or NetZero, why you ask? Because our service is such crap they actually need it to get on somtimes, even though some of the numbers are exactly the same.
MSN, like most other ISPs, do not use their own equiptment for the POPs, they rent or lease then from uunet, qwest, etc. This is painfully obvious when making a manual dialup connection you have to use MSN/ front of the username.
This would be a great application of Mozilla code. These folks need to build a branded version of Mozilla and distribute it as 'their' browser, bundling in all the tools and services (as well as the advertising thingies they need to keep the service free). It's just too risky using IE or the Netscape-branded version of Mozilla -- these browsers are distributed by their two biggest competitors!
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Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Oh dear God, would you please STFU? Having Internet access since 1996 does not make you an "oldster". I had my first shell account with Internet access back in 1988, and I don't consider myself an oldbie. I remember when Gopher was the biggest damn thing ever, and thinking that this stupid web thing was never going to replace it. Other people I know remember life before DNS.
I'm all for universal net access. If you collected all of the master's degrees and PhD's from my friends, you'd find an astonishing array of really interesting specialties, but almost none of them are computer-oriented in any way. It frustrates the hell out of me that I can't communicate with them online because they consider net access to be too low a priority to pay much for it, and because elitist cranks like you run around thinking using Netscape 3 in 1996 makes you a freaking veteran.
We're technicians, goddamnit, and despite the tendency of technical people to grossly overestimate their own intelligence, there are plenty of smart and interesting people in other fields. Bring 'em on! And if that means we have to deal with semi-literate trailer trash, well, using spell-checker output to trigger filtering software will get rid of 99% of them.
(And those annoying people who are too lazy to use the shift key and punctuation.)
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
NetZero and Juno are old courtroom buddies, having both sued each other in the past. Now they are merging? I don't tend to be a conspiracy theorist but this sounds odd to me.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4290897.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1993249.html
If you lose money on every subscriber, how does your free ISP stay afloat?
Through volume...
if ya cant name 3 3AreZ groups that were around when it was /almost/ cool to speak in hacker, you havent been around long enough...
kids these days.
no respect i tell ya...
and now i hit the "post anonymously" button
tagline
... hi bingo
Here's an excerpt from the merger documents that I happened to see at our law offices. . . "the asset value of the combined entities will be net zero"
I couldn't resist, don't Juno it.
Signal-To-Noise ratio, as you put it, will simply go up with the popularity of any service/product. As something appeals to the masses, you get exactly that, the masses at large accessing this service. Maybe this is a representation of society as a whole? We can complain til we are blue in the face, but that doesn't cure the problem. The only solution is to be proactive and educate where you can.
Everyone Love Free... it a marketing ploy... nothing is free. You can think of it that way anyway. In some way or another, money is changing hands. Cable television and advertising is probably the best example. Expect to see more "forced viewing" of advertisements. The option of paying straight out dollars will always aleviate most of this forced viewing. GameSpy Arcade is an example of this... as occassionally it does force you to view an add. Everything is being paid for in some aspect... and this of course does produce some economic activity.
Lower bandwidth... eh... simply an inflamatory statment. I merely repoint to my last statement sighting that money does change hands.
Think positvely, embrace change, and simply try to live a happy life... I think...
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Give it time my friend.
;)
Small ISP's that are getting fat and tastey are great treats for the eat-em-up corporate world.
Of course they can always opt not to sell...
*evil laugh*
Oh well, more reasons to move to canada. Good beer and small town ISP's.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Sigh... Mostly the comment after the article explanation. Here even in smalltown USA we have seen a serious decline in mom and pop shop ISP's (their last thriving palace).
;)
Having worked for one and now coporate amercia(tm) I really do miss the old times.
I guess all good things are destined to go down this path.
At least I can look forward to being an old man getting to complain about how things used to be.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
There are millions and millions of people on Netzero...how is that a small user base? There are alot of people who just use it to check email once a day. What is the point in paying for such a small net usage if you don't have to?
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Thank you for calling Netzero Technical Support, how may I help you?
You want to cancel your account?
Ok Sir, unless the accounts are actively maintained (some activity, email or otherwise) then they should become deactive within 2 months.
Thank you for calling...
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
If Netzero counted every single user that had signed up for Netzero, Netzero have a bigger "user base" then AOL.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Ugh... I dont even want to imagine... one gives free net access, one free email, both have an optional pay service that no one uses... I can see a failed IPO and a Chapter 11 in the near future...
i mac2001/ for the goatsex weary)
[OT] On a positive note, heres a story at ArtificialCheese.com on the possible new iMac. (http://www.artificialcheese.com/articles/june01/
Mark Duell
I guess there is a fundamental problem when people are really just cheap at heart. I know only a few really deep-down cheap people and guess what, they all use a "free" service because according to them, "why pay for something I can get free?"
I long since stopped trying to help them with tech problems - I know they don't respect or value my time and knowledge.
Really; phone lines cost money. Modems cost money. Staff costs money. BANDWIDTH costs money. Ad's don't cut it and won't cut it to pay the bills.
Comon' people - crack open the pocketbook and PAY for something for once in your life. Get this garbage, 'er business model, off the 'net!
-----
Do you sound elitist? Of course. Do you care? no. Some people still want the free stuff because they either can't afford it (because they are young and their family don't want to pay for it) or they want to spend their money on better things than to subscribe to get hooked up to the Internet, which for all the benefits that it has, also has many drawbacks. Most of us here at Slashdot probably spend more time than we really should online. Come on! Go out and enjoy the summer (I really shouldn't talk, spending more than 15+ hours a day in front of the screen).
If you really try to spend $100 a month on commercial software (and they are not games) then you are just plainly more foolish. You have bought into the franchise - you are going to subscribe to the software taxes (read: licensing fees) for the rest of your life so people like Bill Gates can get rich (I'm not going to knock Bill, I think he deserves to be rich). But for the most part, the "free" (as in beer) software that's out there is keeping us from getting completely assimilated into the software consumer farm-raising that large corporate software houses are trying to do - just like McDonald's and Disney are raising generation after generation of consumers who will be loyal subscribers from childhood, so have you succumbed to the same mentality for software. But that's just my opinion.
And what exactly is wrong with giving Internet access to people? If there are companies willing to give that away, then go right ahead. Just because you paid for your connection it doesn't make you more legitimate or more "wholesome" (gag me, please). You consider it stolen bandwidth, well, suppose I paid more for my connection than you. Well, I can still consider that you have stolen bandwidth from me, because after all, I paid more for my connection, why should you have equal opportunity to get license? Why, ISPs should just give more priority to higher paying customers, and relegate whatever bandwidth that is left over to those who paid less. I'm sure you can see how quickly this will mean that the Internet will only be available to the richest people in the world while being, for all practical purposes, inaccessible to most people in the world (which is currently true, of course).
is how these two can manage to stay in business in the face of massive advertising from giants AT&T and AOL. AT&T has service for $4.95/month, which *almost* anyone can afford. AOL is still pumping out free disks at an incredible rate, and I know from personal experience that their customer retention tactics are as inexorable as those of Scientologists. I didn't realize NetZero was still in business until just a couple of weeks ago I found out a friend of mine is using their service. I suppose they have a niche for the really poor or the really frugal, but what is the point of paying them to run your ads, in the face of such a relatively small subscriber base?
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
I'm an Internet "oldster" .. I was surfing the Web as far back as 1996
It should have been moderated up, but as "funny" rather than "Interesting".
Sad thing is, I think the original poster was serious. If you were trying to be funny you'd say I'm an Internet "oldster" .. I was surfing the Web as far back as March.
Face it, anybody who didn't access their first Internet email box in character mode is a newbie. And when I say character mode I don't mean email not including HTML, nor do I mean these wimp environments like Elm and Pine. Real Internet oldies read their mail using /usr/bin/mail, or if they were wimps, /usr/ucb/mail.
Real Internet oldies who are true geeks wrote their own mail program using shell script, and they wrote the shell script using /bin/ed, not any of these modern editors like vi and emacs.
Don't be deluded into thinking you know vi because you know vim either. If your first experience in Unix text editing was vim, you're a newbie on the Internet, a veritable infant.
To be a real Internet oldie, you have to have sent email to an email address that involved explicit routing at some time in the past - it doesn't matter if it was a UUCP bang path or a percent hacked path, as long as it involved explicit routing.
Anybody who thinks using the net since '96 makes you an oldie needs a serious dose of reality.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
They pick whatever people might want to discuss. Apparently this is one of them. So stop yer whining!
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
It is elitist fool like you, that caused the French revolution, *slaps* grow a brain. To assume that because a person is poor they have nothing to offer and that they shouldn't add on tenth of a second to your load time for Slashdot is the most moronic thing i have heard in a long time. As any service grows, the demand on it will increase and so will the supply, basic business rule. Would you rather the internet was as it was a few years back ,a tiny group people, little content, or would you rather have it expand, offer more and more to the world at large helping people learn and get access to essentials like p0rn. As other have pointed out here, it is far smarter to teach people than to tell them all to piss off.
I don't know how far-fetched this is, but given that they're going to rename themselves United Online, and given that Juno has this distributed-app thing going on, is it likely that this will have anything to do with United Devices, a distributed computing company with several of the key players from distributed.net?
-Nev
No, it's not a dream; in fact, it's how things operate under capitalism. A farmer produces more grain than he can eat, and needs a tractor, so he sells some grain, and uses it to buy a tractor. A tractor maker produces a tractor he can't personally use, and needs grain to eat, so he sells the tractor, and uses the money to buy grain. Money is just a convenient score-keeping system that allows us to barter our goods and services far more conveniently.
What's more, this system automagically determines the 'correct' exchange rate between goods. If Bob will give me a tractor for a thousand bushels of grain, and Steve offers a similar tractor for five hundred bushels of grain, then I trade with Steve. Again, the directness of the trade is masked by using money as an intermediary.
--
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
This was discussed here on slash earlier this year.
otherwise you have to sell them on the value of the "improved" service. For example, I think they charge 5 bucks a year(?) or something like that for the ability to do email attachments.
for some folks that will do the job, they do not need broadband.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So they'll have 8 million people that (if Juno gets its way) can barely spend any time on the net without being harrassed to stop using so many hours.
(yet somehow they'll still have a better service than AOL)
1996 isn't an olderster, my friend... that's about when the world hopped
on the Internet bandwagon...
As for free Internet... there are a lot of kids out there who
could've used something back in 91 or 92 to provide access
(this is back when my favorite browser was Lynx, until I found the
joy of a SLIP connection...) for free...
Just because you're bandwidth hungry doesn't mean the service isn't valid.
If 5K/s is something that bugs you so much, I highly recommend just
logging off and junking your computer because it isn't going to get any better.
... a true "oldster".
~- Llah -~
- Signal-to-noise ratio - I'm an Internet "oldster"
.. I was surfing the Web as far back as 1996 and can assure some of the newer members here that the Internet used to be a much more productive tool. Think about it; how much does a standard, unlimited dial-up account cost these days? $14.95? $19.95? And just who are Juno and NetZero targeting? They are going after people who cannot pony up fifteen bucks a month for legitimate Internet access. Now ask yourself: What value can these people possibly contribute to the Internet at large?
- Encouragement of the "gimme gimme gimme" entitlement mentality - Our society is rapidly moving towards a mindset where people believe, for whatever reason, that they are entitled to certain things, and Internet access is one of those things that people seem to think they have a God-given right to. I don't care if it's universal health care, retirement benefits, or Internet access
.. the mentality that there are some things that should be just "given away" for free is destructive and may uproot the economies of the Western world.
.. not because it is free. It bothers me to see people boast about running Linux and "not having to pay one penny for software." If that's the only reason you're running Linux, perhaps you need to reconsider your priorities. Personally, I try to spend at least $100 USD on commercial software each month, just to ensure the vitality of the system. The vitality of the system is threatened by NetZero and Juno.
- Lower bandwidth for legitimate users - When hundreds of NetZero/Juno customers clog up Web sites such as Slashdot or JenniCam, they are stealing bandwidth from those of us who actually pay for our Internet access. If I could be getting 5K/sec more if it weren't for freeloaders, I consider that stolen bandwidth
.. bandwidth that is being hijacked from me and from the hundreds of thousands of other legitimate Internet users that get their access through more wholesome means.
I could go on, but you get the picture. I believe that it's the duty of real Internet users to oppose "free ISPs." They set a bad precedent, and they run the very real risk of screwing up a Good Thing for the rest of us.I'll tell you what: screw the Internet and just look at the microcosm that is Slashdot. Over the course of the past couple of years, this community has deteriorated from an intelligent online discussion forum to a veritable cornucopia of goat trolls and first posts. Common sense dictates that the majority of this crap is coming from uneducated, lower-class people at the very bottom of the wage scale. Juno and Netzero are dedicated to making sure that these people get Internet access. Well, you can call me elitist, but I call that bullshit.
Linux is another example. Don't get me wrong; I love Linux (and have three machines running it here at home.) But I use Linux because it is a reliable, powerful operating system
Oh, and by the way... 1996 is not an "internet oldster" by ANY stretch of the imagination.
My Internet experience predates the World Wide Web altogether, when it was all about comic strips (Archie? Veronica? Jughead?) or animals (Gopher?) or even HAM radio nerdiness (KA9Q?)... And even I'm not an "oldster" by any stretch of the imagination. When I went online with my beautiful Motorola 88k-based workstation (boy, was it cool), there were already "oldsters" everywhere around me.
So really you're missing exactly the same context that you accuse the new folks of missing. The fact is, the 'net is here to be helpful, and the original spirit of things (before banner ads and the dot-com economy) was that it was here to be helpful to everybody.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Perhaps you don't understand: I'm agreeing with you and not with the original poster. My intent was not to say that free product does not undermine capitalist economies (perhaps it does, perhaps not, there are a number of systemic subtleties), but my intent is to say that in my opinion the integrity of a capitalist economy is MOOT when compared to the value of helping others.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The crucial point, however, is that since money is the sole intermediary for all products in a capital economy, people are much more likely to hoard money and [this was the point of my post] do things like destroy real resources that could be used to feed others in order to protect the exchange value of their money, which in the end can't actually be used to feed anyone...
In the absence of capital, you won't find the broom maker keeping 1,000 brooms in his back room because it makes him feel "rich" nor are you as likely to find him burning 995 of them out back to protect the exchange value of his brooms and thus, his wealth.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
FIRST... Elitism: of course there are people less educated than you are, and of course they can sometimes be a problem because they just don't know how to behave or how to interface with the world. But instead of trying to hide uneducated or less fortunate people under a rock, how about we educate them instead? And of course, experience is one of the most effective forms of education!
Let me use a metaphor. You and I are educated folk, and we are standing in the world's largest library. Some less educated people who aren't familiar with the stacks, dewey decimal, or library etiquette come in and discuss loudly amongst themselves how difficult it is to find things in this library. You propose that we chase these people out because we find them distracting. I propose that we tell them how to behave in the library, how to use the stacks, and then let them learn to their hearts' content.
SECOND... Free goods undermining western economies: I can't believe you just made that argument. It was ugly in the Grapes of Wrath and it's ugly today in technology. I personally believe that everything should be free. If I'm a farmer, I distribute my grain free to everyone in your family and extended family, and in return, you as a tractor-maker give me a tractor for free. After all, my farm produces much more food than I can possibly eat, and you as a tractor maker actually have little use for a tractor once it's built... But that's just an idyllic dream, of course.
Now, I'm willing to concede that we live in a capital-based economy and thus, not everything can be free. However, your statement that free products undermine the economy implies that no products at all should be free. That is bullshit. If the people are hungry and there is food, feed them. Don't throw the food into the bin to preserve market price structures. With the internet we have the ability to distribute real knowledge to all people to an extent that has never been seen before in human history. We can raise everyone's consciousness and potential quite a lot bit for very little cost.
To use an example/semi-metaphor again, I personally would find it terribly offensive and horrible if Linux were to suddenly cost $$$ just for the sole purpose of helping out the U.S. economy, thereby depriving thousands of poor computer users around the world in developing or war-ravaged countries of their primary operating system!
You, sir, are borderline evil.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I just signed up for AT&T at full price. I assume connecting at $4.95 should be the same. I've already connected via my Linux machine (running Red Hat 6.2). All I needed to do was use the Gnome Dialup configuration tool to set up the connection.
AT&T also has a document at http://www.wurd.com/eng/setup/dialers/linux.html to guide you through dialing in via Linux.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Just like when Worldspy sold out to Juno and I logged on one day, expecting my nice speedy reliable Worldspy connection, and instead got a message on how Juno would provide a quality service. Well, I tried Juno, and it sucked like a gaping belly wound.
When businesses merge, as a general rule, service and quality of goods simply go down. It's funny how every damn time they tell you the opposite. This makes just about every company that has a merger a liar.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Greetings; Being a technician, I run into a ton of different problems, with computers, including internet providers. Lately, I have been working with a older man, and he has Juno. It will dial the number, but it won't connect. We've tried multiple numbers, no luck. We've then tried a different internet provider, and it connected right away at 48K, so in any case, we would email Juno and ask them your problem/question/consern. Juno has a clever way of having a "word" search for technical support, just like any other major corperation. But, it doesn't do any good. They do give you a number to call, but they will charge you for technicial support. They will not help there "free" customers. Now, I remember back in the day when I used to use Juno, I never had a problem with it, and it was pretty popular back then. What happened with there good service? They became too big, and now there servers suck? If they combine with Netzero, which has terrible service as well, make things even worst. 2 ISP's that both suck now, combining? This should be interesting.
-Tyler Hall
netzero can't even secure their environment...don't believe me? look here:
http://209.242.124.241
... were one of the reasons for the Internet changing from what it was circa 1996.
A laptop still cost $3,600, a PC still cost $2,000, and a Palm cost something like $550.
The Internet was finally starting to change from hourly access to a fixed price (probably the best thing the Internet ever did psuedo-collectively), opening the doors to those who didn't really want to shell out a lot of money for something like the Internet. The Internet was also starting to mature, so those who would generally have a lack of interest became interested.
Then we saw late 1998 and all of 1999 (arguably 'the year of the cable Internet/DSL'), which gave many people a high-speed, affordable, always-on alternative to the T1 or ISDN.
Slashdot has matured as well (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your stance), and its maturity includes the trolls...
You usually have at least a little bad where there's otherwise a lot of good -- the Internet included.
Do you like German cars?
You only merge for one reason: Economies of scale.
Both players are leveraging the dialup pops of backbone providers like Cable and Wireless, MegaPOP, and whats left of Ziplink. Combined they can possibly pay less for their access -- you didn't actually think they deployed their own network gear did you?
So merger time means they are both sucking-wind fast and maybe together they honestly think they can "best-fit" their way to profitability.
We had a customer switch over recently from one of them, and when we gave them the number for their area, they said, "Wow, thats the number I used to dial for Juno -- why are you going to be any better?" -- our tech replied, "well, you'll talking to a live person aren't you?" -- oh yeah, and we don't use your computer to search for aliens without your permission, nor do we zap you with advertising or sell you out to other companies.
There are three basic rules (okay, maybe four)
1. You get what you pay for.
2. What comes around goes around.
3. There's no such thing as a free lunch
4. A movie at matinee prices is the *SAME* movie you'll see at regular evening rates.
The advertiser "eyeball" model is dead, and banner advertising (and filtering for that matter) is about to kill whats left of that "revenue stream".
Besides....do you REALLY want to advertise your products and services to people that don't even pay for their internet service?
I agree with an earlier post.....ONE bankruptcy, not two will make things so much easier....
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
Would netzero and Juno have the worlds 2nd largest ISP based on Subscribers or active Subscribers? I know many people who have sign-up more then once for both Juno and NetZero. Does a Free Internet account Expire in like a month or 2. Does it does expire after more then a year? I don't think NetZero has the largest 3rd largest Active Subscriber Base. If Netzero and Juno merge and start saying we are the 2nd biggest internet proveder(or #1 Provider of the real internet). Then earthlink should sue them for Lying, right?
Maybe AT&T or who ever is fourth, should sue NetZero as it is?
--This Massage was posted by a mentally ill man and as such can not be modded down
I could be wrong (has been known to happen from time to time ;) but it looks like all sides are forming alliances and facing off for some sort of huge computer/internet armegeddon.... ok maybe thats an exaggeration..
But with the AOL/Time-Warner deal... and Microsofts already quite extensive network of software and media companies.. this Netzero/Juno thing seems to cap it off with three major computer/net/media/etc 'groups'.
Now I realize all have unique customers all their own, obviously Juno/Netzero (uol is it?) can't really compete with Microsoft on a software basis. But I think we will see these 3 conglomerates battling it out for 'most influential' net company out there...
Or maybe I've been staying up too late reading Orwell..shrugs...
------ cat ~/lamesig >> ~/lamecomment ------
'..that kernel panicked like a nun in a crack house!'
Which TOS agreement will be used in the "UOL" ISP? Juno wanted the user's computer ready at a moment's notice for their personal enjoyment by running their programs on the end user's machine. NetZero, as far as I know, does not have such a stringent policy. Simply the merger will cost them millions of dollars, which with the drop in the global economy, will be hard to obtain using an advertising based payment method. I don't see a bright future for this company.
Will we call them UOL?
FP
Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
Free ISPs burn money like it was kindling, as we all know. Passive advertising doesn't make up the loss, and requiring your users to "donate" CPU cycles is problematic at best, and can stretch an already faltering infrastructure. As seti@home demonstrates, it's also insecure.
I can think of a couple ways that United Online might become profitable, however. Browser hijacking is one possibility - periodically force the user, kicking and screaming, to visit a sponsor's web site. Another idea I just had is, ironically enough, a way to use United Online for secure communication.
Basically, a company using the secure communication service sends their email to United Online. The message is broken into tiny ( less than a kilobyte) segments, and each segment is encryted further. The segments are then distributed randomly to UO users, along with the (encrypted) email address of the recipient. When the user recieves the encrypted segment, it is encoded into his or her next email message using stengography, and CC'd to the intended recipient (the one using the encrypted message). Random emails not containing the enrypted data are also sent to the recipient as "decoys". The result is that the recipient recieves a LOT of email, but can sort through it to find the encrypted data. Of course, there are practical problems, and this is a horrible breach of privacy,but it might be a viable business model. I know this is vague, please don't flame me.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I just don't get this sentence:
If you--a free ISP--turn your subscribers into paying customers, are you still a free ISP? This seems like a new koan for me to ponder, kinda like the notion of "Compassionate Conservatism". Or maybe this is an example of this "new math" that they started teaching after I finished elementary school."What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Yes, so six months from now they can have one bankruptcy case instead of two. Think of how much the taxpayers will save.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"