Slashdot Mirror
Case to Step Down from AOLTW
squiggleslash writes "Reuters is reporting that Steve Case, the CEO of AOL Time Warner, is resigning, to be effective in May. He'll still be part of AOLTW but as a director responsible for joint strategy. There have been various moves afoot to oust the man who masterminded AOL's takeover of the media giant: the Time Warner part of the partnership wants control whereas Case came from the loss making super-ISP. Case quitting could be bad news for technologists given the current battles between content providers like Time Warner and the Internet and computer industries."
Actually Steve Case is chairman, Dick Parsons is the CEO.
hope he gets a truck full of AOL cds
Perhaps now I can regain some of the money I lost in the freaking stock of AOL!
Ted Turner announced, with the help of wrestlers Hollywood Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, from his former wrestling organization (World Championship Wrestling), a "New World Order" (nWo) would be taking over AOL-TW, and there's not a damn thing anybody can do about it. Turner finished his press conference by saying "You're either with us, or you're against us, and you don't want to be against us."
Here.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
CNBC ran a show last night called "The Big Heist: How AOL Took Time Warner". Good one-hour program that went over the history of the deal and personalities involved, with interviews with leading industry figures. It's their first original content production so I'm sure it'll be on again.
Advice: on VPS providers
AOL failed because the online advertising industry failed. After they owned this giant media company they resolved to putting even more annoying AOL commercials on TW's network and failed miserably (you can't make money off yourself). All in all I can't say I'm surprised by this move, it's long overdue.
Oh, yeh, and because he might inject some business sense into that unfathomable catastrophe of a company.
You say that now, but I'm willing to bet many American users of the Internet got their start using AOL. Hell, I'm sure quite a few slashdotters went that route as well (perhaps even yourself).
Whether you want to admit it or not, AOL has helped make the Internet a mainstream thing, which in itself is a social revolution simply because of the implications. I'm sure it would have become this way eventually even without AOL, but it would have taken considerably longer and maybe not be as collossal as it is today.
Another thing: without bringing in mainstream users to the Internet (including this group of 'assholes' you speak of), online businesses like eBay, Amazon.com, etc. would most likely not flourish because, uhm, they wouldn't have anyone to sell stuff to (or for).
Steve Case is responsible for /.?
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
You know what, this guy brought the very Internet that we have all grown to know and love to the homes of millions of Americans.
He's helped all of us programmers, system administrators, and consultants earn more by adding substantially to our customer base. More computer users means more of a market for computer experts like all of us.
I only wish they would keep him around a bit longer. Sure, they waste some CDs and packaging material, but all in all they've done us a great amount of good.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
'USENET used to be smart people in front of dumb-terminals, now it's dumb people in front of smart-terminals.'
BIFF: " HOW DO I LOOK AT THE PICTURES ON MY HARD DRIVE?"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Good riddence
Let me guess. You brought all the bad spellers.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
...AOL's $22.95 a month was too much even for him.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Remember when people thought he might be a counter balance to Bill Gates? While not a fan of his, or his crappy software, at least it was another option.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
(AP) Across the nation, child molesters, kiddie-porn addicts, NAMBLA Members, Catholic Priests and other pederasts dropped their pants in a moment of tribute as Steve "The Great Enabler" Case announced his resignation from AOL Time-Warner (AOLTW) today.
Said shavedbi_86, a dude who pretends to be a chick in various online forums, as he dropped trou in an internet cafe in downtown Bangor, Maine: "Man, [Steve Case]... damn. I dunno where else I'd be able to indulge my recurring fantasies of having a minor female cross state lines to have lesbian intercourse with me, if it weren't for AOL. Under [Steve Case's] guidance, AOL has grown from a small, regional communication system for perverts in Virginia, to an international hub for child pornography. God bless you Mr. Case!"
Law enforcement officials were also quick to comment. "Although some are quick to judge AOL for its congregation of sexual predators, we'd like to applaud Mr. Case for the family-friendly nature of his service. I myself enjoy the occasional meeting in an AOL chat room, knowing that I can trade porno in peace and security, guarded by the AOL Terms of Service from any foul-mouthed, anti-social behavior in its chat rooms", said Mr. A------t, a justice department official, on condition of anonymity.
Said president George Bush, upon hearing of the resignation: "Whad'ya mean it's pronounced New-CLEE-er?"
Other famous Americans, including Bugs Bunny and Superman, also expressed regret at Mr. Case's resignation.
Mr. Case, who now prefers to be called simply "Heather", could not be reached for comment.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
This guy brought more assholes to the internet than everyone else put together.
One of the most impressive knee-jerk reactions I've seen in a while. Quite frankly you almost sound like one of them...
First, how is it his fault? Is it Ford's fault for bringing bad drivers onto the road because of mass production of automobiles? If so wouldn't this be an effect of mass production and marketing rather than from a single man?
Second, your view sounds rather elitest. If there hadn't been AOL the Internet would only be populated with geeks that just talk about computers and Sci-Fi.. How fun would that be and what would the results be? No chicks on web cams, no online news sites due to small demand and no online stores due to no demand. And again, no chicks with webcams.
Perhaps you just choose the wrong word, but I generally find snobby "holier than thou" geeks to be larger assholes than the everyone else.
Come on back down to Earth my friend.
Under Steve Case, AOL was a company that took advantage of its customer's ignorance. Under Steve Case, pushed its customers in every way possible to get money from them.
Someone said, "AOL was founded on the idea that users of the Internet need training wheels to get started." Using AOL says, "I don't have any friends who understand computers." As users get smarter, they realize they don't need AOL.
Swallowing Time-Warner was a way of bailing out from a company on the way down, at the last moment possible.
People who are motivated by nothing but money reduce the quality of our lives, and, unfortunately, we don't have sophisticated social responses against this kind of abuse.
It was probably because Case is not the CEO of AOLTW, he is the Chairman of the Board.
The CEO is Richard D. Parsons.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Everyone should get off Steve's case (no pun intended). He (with the help of many coworkers) made going online a lot easier for MILLIONS of people. When's the last time you helped MILLIONS of people? Anyway, I'm sorry to see him go. I would have loved to watch Gates and him slug it out for years to come. That would have been real entertainment.
The funny thing (not in a "ha ha" way) is, he architected a fantastic failure of a merger, and will walk away a bajillionaire for having screwed up.
-Teckla
Hmm, that site looks pretty secure, huh? ;)
Are they running IIS?
Anyway, I guess "easy to use" and "secure" are mutually exclusive over at Ark.
Has anybody thought how AOL and Time Warner stocks would have performed had the two not been married? AOL would be crashing to the point of near-zero, while Time Warner would still be hanging out with Viacom, News Corp., Disney, and the other content providers who have writen off most of their .com operations long long long ago.
The origninal Time Warner shareholders got the shaft, as they now have to absorb AOL's downfall, while the AOL shareholders got the nice liferaft ending up with shares of Time Warner instead of another useless tech stock. Time Warner's shareholders are not happy, and they want their company back now...
AOL wasn't good per se for the diversity of the internet and technical advancements, but giving the reins of the world's largest ISP to TimeWarner, a media company that has ties to organisations such as the RIAA has to be a step backwards.
... "My computer says I have mail, but the mailman hasn't come yet!" ... but when they represent a large proportion of surfers, they are the ones that large corporations will want to target, and this move seems to increase their chances of doing so.
Imagine the RIAA and TimeWarner controlling AOL (to some extent, at least), thus controlling the internet experience and online-purchasing abilities of a significant fraction of internet surfers.
Granted 'we' dislike AOLers
So, what's the solution?
VOTE RMS for AOL/TimeWarner CEO!!!
Okay, he made a little boo-boo and his pointless merger will cost investors quite a few billion dollars. But that's hardly cause to slap him down to Joint Strategist. What does a Join Strategist make, anyways, a few dozen million dollars per year? Yeah, I know the company is losing money, but we all make mistakes and a guy has to eat and keep the bar in his Leerjet stocked.
Case quitting is only **Good News**. He hobbled millions of people's development by promoting a fluffy, saccharine-coated, "HEY - you really ARE an idiot", mindless piece of trash. Sort of like what Disney did for the classics :-) Have you actually watched an AOL commercial lately?
Steve Case did no one any favors, except maybe himself, and neither did the guy with the six-foot rat icon.
Stoptional
They have been gunning for his since day one. Entertainment biz has a entirely different culture than Internet/Technology. Where at AOL he was viewed as a god, at Time Warner he was a loud mouth, blunt speaking, jerk of sorts.
It also doesnt help that he helped reduce many Time Warner execs, pensions, and people stocks at Time Warner from something in the 50's per share to its current 14 per share. Including helping Ted Turner turn his fortune from $8 billion to $2, sure its still a crap load of money but single handedly making $6 billion disappear is no small feat.
Me too!
This will be bad for consumers. Currently, AOL has control over TW. But if the TW side grows more powerful, and Warner gains control over the Internet access of 30 Million Worldwide Members(tm), then Warner can use them as pawns in the battle for DMCA II and Bono Act II in the USA and EU legislatures.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If there is any more loot left in the hold, then it's not time to leave the sinking yet. The best corporate raiders always take it all. Rats leave a shinking ship. Watch for a rash of resignations at AOLTW.
How ya like dat?
--girls
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
...."goodbye!"
-RickTheWizKid
I used to use AOL... then I grew up
...but things turned out just a bit differently. As a former AOL employee, I can tell you that while it started out with AOL taking over Time Warner,it's slowly started to turn around. How many former Time Warner executives now work for AOL? Quite few, yet for some reason, very, very few of the former AOL execs, now work for TW.
I was never fond of AOL, but at least Steve Case wasn't "one of them" (old-media type).
As an ex-AOL employee who lost a lot of money
on AOL stock (my fault, I didn't sell early enough),
I am glad to see this announcement.
Steve, if Barry Schuler is still there, tell him to
take a hike. His arrogance and incompetence
played a major part in the current woes of AOL.
Ironically CNBC had a special on AOL Time Warner entitled "The Heist, How AOL Took Time Warner". Hehe. At the end of it in October 2002 they had a blurb from Steve Case saying he had no plans for stepping down. Sounds like someone finally got the board to oust him like they did to Levin. The AOL and Time Warner merger has GOT to go down in history as the worst business deal of all time. I feel bad for the Time Warner people who had their retirement in its stock only to be merged with AOL on the way into a bursting Internet stock bubble. Steve Case deserves to get a boot in the ass and AOL Time Warner should change the name back to Time Warner and stick AOL back with the other minor departments. Hell, spin it off and fold it.
Time Warner is the part of AOLTW that includes Jamie Kellner, who famously declared that PVR owners are thieves because they skip the commercials. Ironically, this person is head of the remains of what was Ted Turner's empire before it was swallowed up.
Case came from a part of AOLTW that was built on providing consumers with access to a new technology, that marketed, packaged, and opened a network that could have remained a geek cul-de-sac. Steve Case's AOL innovated, it opened up ways of communicating from easily-built websites to user friendly instant messaging, and it even, despite Time Warner's influence, gave birth to what'll probably end up being the defacto standard file swapping system, Gnutella.
It's sad to see him go. It's even sadder to know that there's a strong chance that AOLTW, rather than being the bulwark against DRM and other technological shackles through being on the "inside" and able to lead the fight to keep content open, will now, almost certainly, lead the way - through ownership of TW Cable and AOL - in rebuilding the Internet as a closed system.
That's terrible news, and I hope it doesn't come to pass.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Everyone seems to be acting as if this is important. I, however, cannot seem to fathom why it matters who is at the helm of one of the world's worst ISPs. Will AOL abandon all the crap that made them so successful? Will Time Warner renounce the RIAA and MPAA and say it's all about the consumer? Will anything really change?
On a simpler note, maybe someone can answer this question: is this good or bad for the geek community here at Slashdot?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Anyone who says Steve Case sucks is a goon.
Everyone here is bitching about how much AOL sucks, and it does, but I have to admit, it got my mom, my dad, and my granparents online. They can't figure out Windows, let alone Linux, or installing software, or getting themselves on Earthlink. They don't really understand IE, the concept of a browser or email program outside of AOL, or search engines.
Sure, you could argue that AOL handicapped them and that is WHY they don't get it, but I maintain, living hundreds of miles away, that AOL GOT them online.
So, as much as it r^H shapes your knowledge of the internet, it still does a lot for many millions of people. All of this blossomed under Mr. Case. I have to give Steve's effort an A.
There may soon be very few local independent ISPs left. They are dropping like flies around here. The giants are pushing them out of business, and even the backbone providers have suddenly, overnight, jacked up the prices of the local ISP's T1 feeds to exhorbitant prices or are refusing to renew their service contracts outright. Something fishy, other than the bad economy, is going on in ISP-land these past 8 weeks.
Time Warner was good for AOL like having a former ATT exec on the board of @Home was good for @Home - it resulted in total ruin. The death of AOL is NOT going to convince anyone to buy a dead tree Time magazine any more than the death of @Home has slowed the move away from long distance telephone calls. Time Warner is sitting on a lot of old models and people who invest in it deserve to be pummeled. They failed entirely to take advantage of the world's largest ISP to promote themselves and change their marketing model. There's a reason no one here ever quotes Time here, they are clueless. I hope you own lots of TW stock Mr. Cluster, you deserve it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Seriously folks, let's not do too much AOL bashing here. AOL is one of the giants of the tech industry -- one of the few big enough to hold its own against Microsoft. That's saying a lot. Their 35 million subscriber base dwarfs MSN's.
What would the Internet look like if those 35 million were MSN subscribers? Do you honestly expect the Internet would be nearly as open as it is today? We might have that closed-loop that Gates envisioned in the original version of The Road Ahead.
Although I'm not an AOL subscriber myself, I for one am glad it's there, and I hope they continue to retain their sizable lead in the ISP market. We need that balance.
And let's not forget that AOL funds the bulk of Mozilla development. I show my thankfulness for that by using the branded Netscape browser and patronizing the branded Netscape portal. You should, too.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Time Warner is the part of AOLTW that includes Jamie Kellner, who famously declared that PVR owners are thieves [slashdot.org] because they skip the commercials. Ironically, this person is head of the remains of what was Ted Turner's empire before it was swallowed up.
/. metaphor: Oil funds terrorism, so all people who own cars are terrorists.
Wrong, and FUD. Granted, Kellner isn't exactly up on the current evolving digital market but he did not say PVR owners are thiefs. He said PVRs allow Advert skipping, and people who skip adverts are thiefs. He explains this in detail saying, "The programming is ad supported, when you skip those ads you are stealing programming."
What you (and Slashdot) are saying as a typical
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Tonight, Sunday, 9:00 PM Pacific standard time on CNBC (Dish Network and other, re-broadcast): The Big Heist: AOL Took Time Warner.
Tonight, Sunday, 9:00 PM Pacific standard time on CNBC (Dish Network and others, re-broadcast): The Big Heist: AOL Took Time Warner.
For those for whom English is not their native language, "heist" means "theft".
Yes this is true. You then blame Case for the decline of stock value and say,
This is also true though the blame might fall elswhere before it's all over. Was there some reason that Time content did not make it onto AOL's networks? Hmmmm, they had the world's biggest ISP and this is what they do with it? Good work boys! How much do you think Napster, MP3.com and Internet radio was worth combined? Kinda makes $6 billion look small, but the entertainment industry folks destroyed them too. They think they have something special that they can dribble out one dead tree copy after another and profit like the internet does not exist. It's not going to work but those responsible will retire very wealthy anyway.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That pretty much implies that the Kellner's insult wasn't directed at PVR owners who religiously watch every advert downloaded into their puny hard drives.
But, hey, that's ok. If you want to go for an over-the-top reaction, go right ahead. Next time though, please preceed it with "*Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzt!* WRONG!!!!" in the time honoured Usenet tradition... it's more irritating that way.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
AOL has its serious downsides, I'll admit it. But they have also done some really good stuff. The prime example of this is Mozilla. Yes, the open-source web browser that is so justly celebrated on this site is backed by AOL. An awful lot of the main developers are AOL employees, and that fast connection that mozilla.org sits on is provided by AOL.
That makes up for one heck of a lot in the way of crappy customer service, if you ask me. Mozilla is as good as it is largely because there is an actual paid development team that works on it professionally. So don't be too quick to shout "Hurrah!" if AOL melts down.
My guess: MSN becomes the biggest ISP. It is
already huge and it will pick up a lot of those
AOLers. I can see how pretty soon MS will have
the majority of users get internet from MSN.
MS Internet may happen pretty soon.
You know, if you actually read my comment rather than just stopping at the link, you'll see that that's implied. The comment was that he said that "PVR owners are thieves because they skip the adverts". /. story, back to the original 2600 story, which has the full quote.
...it's more irritating that way.
No, he never said that. Go back to the original 2400 article. Follow the link from the original
Again, if we're talking of "over-the-top reaction" I'm pretty sure that saying that someone says something that they did not say is much worse than someone correcting you. But that's fine, you're just a slashbot. If the company is in this month/years badlist, than anything that someone says must be taken out of context, summarized incorrectly, and show that person is an enemy of free speech and they kick small puppies.
So is saying things that aren't true. Then saying they are true.
PVRs are bad for the industry in the current business model. Why? Because they allow people to skip advertisements. Why is this bad? Because the commercials are funded by advertisements. What is it when someone receives something without coming through with the payment of that? Thievery.
Now, the point comes to show that if you just watch a show you didn't agree to watch the commercials, that's fine. It's a valid point. But, it is implied that you agree to watch the commercials in exchange for free programming. What he said was absolutely valid.
Now, you were going to say something else to discredit yourself?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I have to dispute the thread about the causes for AOL's impending demise. The assumption seems to be that AOL is dying because it's users are getting more net-savy, and moving to "real" ISPs. I don't think so. AOL's doom can be explained in one word.
Broadband.
AOL is a dial-up beast. From beginning to end, it was designed as a one-stop-shopping place to get internet access, web surfing, email, and chat services. The user didn't have to configure much of anything. Just run the setup, and you're on. Everything in one, neat, tidy, and USEFULL package. To so many people, it WAS the internet.
While some users wised up and moved on, most AOLers were quite happy to stay put. Then broadband came along. And those same users discoverd that for just a few dollars more than their AOL bill, they could get blazingly fast internet access. Access from a familiar and trusted source (their phone company or cable tv provider). Yes, other means of access were availabe in the dial-up sphere, but users were happy with what they had.
Cable and Phone companies beat AOL to the broadband game, and the jig was up. Even to the AOL faithful, it was apparent that they were no longer the primary means of access to the web. And a giant mental perception in this country came crumbling down. The internet now means Charter, or Verizon, or Bellsouth, or Knology. It doesn't mean AOL in the age of broadband. The perception has now changed. That perception was AOL's most powerful marketing tool. Broadband, since it's on all the time, is pretty much as easy to use as AOL. You don't have to turn it on. Just click an icon for what you need, and bam!, you're there. It's better than the old days for most users, actually.
Yes, those users were told they could still get AOL for an EXTRA ten bucks or so, but by then, why bother? That mental block has been destroyed. AOL is no longer synonymous with access. It was the gateway in. No longer.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Just one note. Ed Case (Steve's cousin) is the new Congressman from Hawaii.
Why did you invest in them? They never had a resonable bussness plan. Sell expensive linux servers... the whole thing was based on companies like Dell and IBM being retarded.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Maybe 10 years ago, but to day all AOL does is shove shitty service down people's throats who don't know any better, or don't want to lose their buddy lists and old email.
Besides, AOL isn't even the same thing as 'the internet'. And it wasn't even connected for a long time. Even today they still use propritaty protocols crap.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
That guy has an aluminum case.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Helping make something easy for someone for a couple then exploiting their ignorance to rape them for as much money as possible indefinitely is not nice. Doing it to millions of people may make you rich, but not nice.
:P
Also, autopr0n.com 'helps' thousands of people a day
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
AOL purchaced TW, not the other way around. AOL was in control.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What is it when someone receives something without coming through with the payment of that? Thievery.
Thievery is when someone deprives someone else of something that belongs to them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If there hadn't been AOL the Internet would only be populated with geeks that just talk about computers and Sci-Fi.
how's that for a knee-jerk reaction.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The bubble popped
now Steve is chopped
Without a doubt,
Time's run out
For all he built,
a crazy quilt
that got too big,
became a pig
now Case is gone,
(I think I'll yawn)
*sorry*
*hey! I've got spell checking in Safari in the comment box!! Woo hoo!*
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I didn't say he did, did I.
...Jamie Kellner, who famously declared that PVR owners are thieves
Uhm, you did say that he said that.
Jeez. If you're going to come up with some ludicrously over the top attack on someone, at least try to figure out what they said.
You attempted to label Kellner as an anti-freedom enemy-of-slashdot because he said that if you deliberately skip all adverts than you are a thief, and you turned it around and said, and I quote verbatim:
So, exactly which part of this am I not understanding that you said? The part where you lie about him, or the part where you say you never said it?
If you're going to use "FUD" to describe something that has nothing to do with IBM or Microsoft's strategies to undermine competitors by making potential customers believe there are risks associated with purchasing those competitor's products, you could at least do me the favour of adding the usual Usenet insults to boot.
Sorry, but lying about something falls under that category. You are trying to undermine him by spreading things that aren't true. So... again, what am I doing here that is wrong?
Damned Slashbot.
Yes, I'm the Slashbot because I'm defending the CEO of TW. Sure... I didn't actually think you would discredit yourselv further, thanks.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
For a 1337 h^xx0r ready to pound on Windows you sure can't format an HTML message to save your life.
The show on CNBC, "The Big Heist: AOL Took Time Warner" was excellent. Best quote: "AOL was a beneficiary of a once-in-a-lifetime bubble that soon came to an end".
I was surprised at how many top executives were interviewed for the show. Sumner Redstone of Viacom and Michael Eisner of Disney are just two.
The show came to no conclusions, however.
What could have stopped Time Warner from making such a self-destructive merger? Ethics. If the TW executives cared about people and what AOL was doing to its customers, if they had cared about other people and not just money, they would have been protected from making the mistake.
Can you believe it??? Someone moderated my post above as a "Troll", when it is a simple, on-topic fact.
Steve Case? Was that you?
The Internet did exist for some time without general public knowledge. Getting access was not easy. And knowing how to make use of said access would be beyond most of today's general users. But there was a major change to that interface; the graphical browser. Mosaic which, in turn, spawned Netscape came on the scene. It made the World Wide Web click-easy. And it coupled in a few other useful protocols. Using the "Internet" now only required the ability to type in an address and click.
Meanwhile, the proprietary on-line services were doing their thing. AOL had long been on the scene, born from an on line gaming service for (among others) Commodore64 platforms. AOL's biggest concern at the time was the apparent launch of the Microsoft Network. MSN would compete directly with AOL... and had the advantage of putting an icon on 90% of the desktops out there (or at least, once Windows 95 shipped). Thus began the war between AOL and Microsoft.
Whispers about this "Internet" thing picked up. Microsoft acknowledged them - but considered it a niche technology (though didn't completely ignore it). AOL included less-than-well-defined access to Internet services as a kind of portal service. AOL users began showing up in Usenet discussions, in some cases becoming overnight annoyances with "me too" posts and threats to turn other users in to AOL's moderators (despite the fact that neither the forums nore the other users in question had anything to do with AOL).
The Internet gained more and more buzz and soon threatened to overcome the very space that proprietary online services now held. AOL pushed the Internet as a major selling point. It was now their business. Meanwhile, MSN reinvented itself. It wasn't just another AOL. It was an ISP. The Internet became Microsoft's business too.
Would millions of people have gone "somewhere else" without AOL? No. They would have gone to their local ISP. They were going to the Internet with or without AOL. AOL was simply wise enough to become part of this change rather than be swept away by it.
Did AOL make it possible for non-techies to access the Internet? Sure. But then, the technology was going that way already. Mosiac. Netscape. And then finally Microsoft with not only IE, but with integrated dial-up networking capability (previously only available through third party apps).
AOL did not create a niche market. They survived a slow but inevitable change. A major shift in technology. A shift that became an incremental landslide. An event that could have made them a footnote in history (much as it did other long-standing industry icons such as Compuserve).
Sure - AOL did their best to be user friendly (although just how much impact they had there is up to debate). They marketed. And they pushed in to new markets (though I do know some areas where local ISPs were available before AOL POPs). One could make a case that AOL's relationship with the Internet has been largely symbiotic.
But AOL did not create the Internet boom. They survived it.
Ah, one of a handful of sensible comments so far. Yes, this is the point - whilst the rest of telecoms and the .com bubble imploded with nothing, Case made sure his shareholders actually had something with value left at the end of it.
There was a time when some net company (I forget - Amazon?) was approaching the market cap. of General Motors and had surpassed that of Boeing. That's ludicrous. Even if those companies shut up shop tomorrow there'd still be a mountain of tangible assets to fall back on. I remember the office I was in at the time saying that if the market was behaving that stupidly, then this net company take advantage and immediately buy something with tangible assets to cement its position.
And then Case did it. He actually stopped just talking about media convergence and actually did something about it. He went with a media firm which, had things panned out as everyone expected then, would have given him the convergence and content control he needed. He also bought a argefirm with a genuine, non-bubble based market cap. thus backing up AOL's share price with a healthy dose of reality.
I usually stay out of discussions like this because it's a sad day when geeks care more about the market than they do technology. However, I did feel that about 90% of the posters in this topic were missing the point completely.
Cheers,
Ian
Wether or not someone skips commercials has no effect on the money that was paid for the commercial.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
For more information on the history of AOL, might I suggest picking up a copy of 'aol.com' by Kara Swisher (Crown Pub. Co., 1999, ISBN 0812931912)? As well as the story of AOL, it delved into the lives of Steve Case, Jim Kimsey and the other key players. It doesn't cover the period leading up to the merger with Time-Warner, and as far as I know there isn't a book out yet that covers that part of the story.
-MT.
I thought his name Steve, not Bill...*cough*
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
The September that never ended...?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Sounds pretty good to me! This wouldn't be one of those alternate universes like where Spock didn't have a beard, would it?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
And that extra money would mostly go towards content side work that AOL do. I don't particularly like the AOL client software, but the content is excellent and extremely simple to navigate. I wouldn't be tempted to use it for shopping, but it must rank as the most simple convenient site if you want to grab a recipe, learn how to fix a crack in wall plaster, read film news or something of that nature.
I hope it does not happen! (I am thinking of Lessig's book Future of Ideas an I am hoping that the Internet stays a standards based open space (or commons) for innovation.)
-Mark Watson
I was hoping he would sink with his ship.
I've been sneered at right here at /. for having an AOL addy, but it's been a great service. It came in handy back around version 3.0 on a Mac LC III, but like lots of people, I've moved on since then.
Steve Case had a great idea which has been overtaken by technological and economic events -- the rise of broadband, as one poster put it, and the Darwinian forces of corpocracy. Now he's essentially being forced to sit on his hands instead of continuing to work at his dream of fostering online community. I suspect TW never really understood Case's vision; they just thought they knew a good cash cow when they saw one.
I wish AOL could get back out from under TW and go on its merry way (and quit mailing out those damned CDs), but they just had to go dancing with the devil, I guess. Sorry 'bout that, Steve.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I should have said,
"The foundation of AOL is the idea that users of the Internet need training wheels to get started."
The AOL software is extremely invasive. It provides multiple kinds of connections to AOL.
Actually, unless I'm mistaken, that was B1FF... ;)
(Bill McNeil's voics)
Aaahhh.... good times.
(/Bill McNeil's voice)