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AOL To Be Purchased By T-Online?
Sique writes "The german newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports on its website, that the german ISP T-Online wants to buy AOL. The article is titled American Dream, but the actual wording is german. Ask the fish for help." There's also the article in Der Spiegel about the potential purchase as well; you can also check out T-Online's site.
If this is more than an American Dream, let's hope that an outcome will be that AOL will loosen their grip on the IM market. The closed model they've been trying to enforce has been holding back a world of possibilities for Jabber and IM client development.
f I remember correctly, T-Online is owned by Deutsche Telekom
;)
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Right.
While T-Online is profitable, Deutsche Telekom is not...
Wrong. Deutsche Telekom [which has the 4 divisions T-Online (Internet), T-Mobile (cell phone service), T-Com (fixed line service, basically the German fixed line network), and T-Systems (something like extended IT services)] is quite profitable right now. They still have huge amount of depths though from the times they purchased expensive 3G UMTS licenses and bought Voicestream for a huge load of money. But they are strongly reducing that depths, and the company is profitable. Actually, the just released their financial statement for the first 9 months of this year today (www.telekom3.de/en-p/inve/2-bu/cont/2003/thir/03
One problem with these figures is the exchange rate between Euro and the US$. 18 months ago, when one Euro was 0.86 US$, your figures were "correct".
Nowadays one Euro is woth about 1.15 US$. Suddenly the GDP measured in US$ per capita jumped up nearly 30%. So did germany close the gap while being in recession? No!
Another problem about the GDP is that the US (AFAIK) gives it an uplift due to the quality increase. This isn't done in Europe.
Regards, Martin
P.S. Let's not play "my ecconomy is bigger than yours". For my part, there are a lot of things, i think the US is doing better. But there are a lot of things too, i consider worse.
True, but then again the British national hobby IS to put down the Germans at every opportunity. If you read The Economist regularly, when reporting on the German economy, if they left out the name of the country you'd get the impression they're talking about some inconsequential two-bit Third World country. Don't get me wrong, no one is harder on themselves than the Germans (just read Der Spiegel and you want to slash your wrists over all the doom and gloom), but it's kind of ironic that the ones pointing their fingers the most are those with their own fair share of problems.
So Britain went for the quick fix short term gains by throwing pretty much their entire social net out the window in the image of their masters across the pond. The Germans OTOH in their typical stubbornness and reluctance to change cling on to their economic model from the '80s, leading to respective blips and dips in the growth charts. Still, they're aware that change is required. I'd say wait another ten years before gloating. The '90s are hardly a solid economic barometer, lots of wanky business went on there (ahem, AOL?!). Besides, sooner or later the outrageous British defence spending is going to come home to roost. I'd say in the not-too-distant future "Operation Freedom" will show up as a big fat dip in the British bottom line, and some politicians will get a fair spanking.