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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
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.
...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.
...AOL's $22.95 a month was too much even for him.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
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.
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
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...
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?
...."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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
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