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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.
This isn't surprising considering that they just dropped AOL from the "AOL Time Warner name.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Does that mean they would be called Time Warner Aol T-Online or TWAT for short? :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
"...german ISP T-Online wants to buy AOL..."
I want to buy AOL, too. I just don't have the money for it...
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
T-Online got probably the most useless abuse department of all major ISPs. I wonder what they will do to AOL? Gut whatever security they got to make it profitable?
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
Why would anyone want to buy AOL after when Time Warner dropped AOL from it's name? I thought it was already a fact that AOL isn't making money.
According to Heise online this has already been denied by T-Online (sorry, German only).
Basically, what they are saying in that news article is that some spokesman from T-Online claims buying AOL would be "economical nonsense". But T-Online has about 4 billion Euro cash with which they'd like to buy some companies. And while T-Online is the biggest online provider of Europe it is largely unknown outside of Europe, thus buying AOL would make sense to some people because T-Online likes to expand and conquer markets outside of Europe.
Sie haben Post (You've got mail)
I remember when AOL started its German division it was a joint venture (50/50) with Bertelsmann (Who also bought Napster). I wonder if they are buying the whole thing or just a portion?
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
I get so much spam from (or through) T-Online i've had to block them. So my feelings for this company are negative, to put it politely. You've actually tried to contact them eh?
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Consider - worlds largest post company - Deutsche Post. The airline that carries the most passengers - Lufthansa. The Germans own a good many of the biggest companies in the auto industry. And Deutsche Telecom (which I believe includes T-Online) is one of the world's largest telecomms.
I think people fail to realise how powerful the German business sector is. If Germany was the same size of the USA, I'm sure it would be the top dog at the moment, not the USA. And now that the European European Union is creating the biggest single global market, Germany should be able to increase it's economy even further as it is at the heart of Europe.
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.
Running AOL's profit/loss statements and investor reports through The Fish are about the only thing that could explain someone actually -wanting- AOL right now...
About the only thing I've ever found The Fish useful for was once confusing the crap out of a friend visiting Italy by making her think I 'spoke' formal Italian. That was good for a few days before another friend spoiled it and told her...
Please help metamoderate.
If I remember correctly, T-Online is owned by Deutsche Telekom ( Some financial info here).
While T-Online is profitable, Deutsche Telekom is not... I wonder (a) if T-Online has enough cash to buy AOL and (b) if European Authorities won't try to block this operation, given the size of the two companies...
Of course, if there are German Slashdot readers who have better info, I am ready to stand corrected!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
by yours truly... in a rush so don't complain if it's not 100% accurate (apologies for the dodgy english as well):
"American Dream"
T-online has lots of money and high ambitions, one option is the take-over of AOL
For years it was a duel that electrified the internet public. Deutsche Telekom with T-online vs. the conqueror from the US: AOL.
The opponents used all means to fight for markets in europe, including law-suits, dumping prices and advertising campaigns. A Particular twist was added when the (german) media company Bertelsman headed by Thomas Middelhoff, worked together with the Americans.
Today, all has changed. Since Spring 2000 Bertelsmann is not involved with AOL anymore and Middelhoff is a partner with Investcorp in London.
He searches for investment opportunities in the entire world and has particularly good contacts to the US, where he is on the board of the NYT. From the deals of the 90s he still knows many people at Time Warner, who euphorically bought AOL 4 years ago but is now unhappy with the online-business.
Time Warner already dropped AOL from the name and are apparently thinking of seeling large parts of the company. The most likely candidate is according to sources of the SZ the T-online AG who has been striving for international expansion for a while, but not achieved its aims in this area.
One idea is for the germans to hold 80% of AOL shares while 30% stay with Time Warner, a cooperation that would change the media-landscape. It would happen due to the deal-making of Middelhoff.
It is the old Bertelsmann Boss and now Investment banker who has aided the talks between T-online and Time-Warner. Information from T-online sources suggest that a meeting between TW boss Richard PArsons and T-online Boss Thomas Holtrop has already occured.
The suggested price-tag is ~1 Bn Dollars. That's a long way away from the former astronomical valuations of the company once promoted by Middelhoff friend Steve Case.
At it's maximum AOL bought Time Warner for 112 Bn Dollar. Recently AOL lost customers, currently there are about 25 Million.
It woudl be easy for Holtorp and Col to pay for the deal. T-online still has 4 Bn Euros. This capital needs a targe so that publicly traded T-online corp can achieve its ambitious growth targets.
Middelhoff was not available for comment. A t-online spokes-person didn't want to commen on the rumours: "Every quarter we're asked "What are you doing with your money?"
Fundamentally there are two major parts of strategy. One is inorganic growth, by purchases and by waiting on consolidation of the market,.
A deal with AOL would have the particular advantage that T-online would get a foot-hold in the american market. Co-operations with sister-firm T-mobile are important as the companies work together on "T-Zones" where T-online supplise contents, which could be important for the US investments of T-mobile.
The Project AOL is top secret. A final decision has not been made. There are risks, in particular in terms of regulators. In Germany AOL never made major inroads. It is likely that after a merger AOL germany would disappear.
On Tuesday T-online has declared a quarterly profit for the first time. T-online now has 12.9 Mn customers, 9% more than last year. 4/5 of these live in Germany, so it's time for a jump. Yes, t-online is on the look-out says Holtrop, and it would not be years until he has something to announce...
As if Bush and Wolfowitz wouldn't declare war on Germany... pfft ;)
Would be neat though to see that annoying little yellow man get replaced with a volks... Wait those beetles are just as annoying. Mercedes? Ok so we could turn the little man into a gangster with a gold chain emblem around his neck and have the rappers chip in on this...
Commercial with Master P scene one
ehhhhhhhhhh
Nope wouldn't cut it... Snoop?
foshizzlemahnizzleyougotsmailbizzle
Hrmm nah... JayZ?
A to the izzO...
Damnit all we have left are the Germans I guess considering the alternatives here. I say let them take it, and let me know when and where I could send these 32,450,987,123,451 AOL 8.0 cd's to.
MoFscker
AOL got security? What's that? An inhouse media player replacement?
Honestly, when it comes to security or any other area that requires basic brain function I'd say the big ISPs are a all the same: Utterly useless.
It's countless times I've called the T-Online Hotline, asked if their mail server was down or the TDSL dialin node was down or some other informal question and every time I've gotten something like this:
Blockhead:"What's your error message?"
Me:"I don't think my error messages are of any use to you."
Blockhead:"What Mailer do you use?"
Me:"*SIGH* K-Mail."
Blockhead:"We only support Outlook or Netscape."
[Meanwhile down in Hell: Satan marks up another Eternity Candidate]
Me:"I know.(I'm not gonna explain to him that E-Mail is a Service while Outlook and Netscape are Mailers and what that all means) I actually just wanted to know if you Mailserver is down."
Blockhead: "What Windows do you use?"
Me: "I use Linux."
Blockhead: "Oh. Well, we don't support Linux." (NOTE THE SIGNIFICANCE: We're in Germany, so he's actually heard the word 'Linux' before)
[Back in Hell: Satan marks Mr. Blockhead up for extra special skinning, boiling and chainsaw subdividing treatment upon arrival.]
Me: "I know.(I'm certainly NOT gonna explain the difference between an Internet Service and an OS to him) I just wanted to know if you Mailserver is down... Could I speak to second level please?"
Blockhead: "Well, all I can say is that due to our troubletickets the Mailserver is up and running and second level won't tell you anything different."
Me: "Thank you very much".
*KLICK* *Duuuuu* (german dialtone)
I seriously doubt it is _any_ better with AOL right now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Does anyone know if these companies (T-Online and T-Mobile) are related? I ask because they have similar names and the SAME logo, but I can't find anything that says they're the same company.
T-mobile are the only company in the history of humanity to have a more-annoying jingle to their adverts than intel.
God I hate that jingle.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Disclosure: I work for a telecom company with a pretty successful ISP and wireless unit that obviously competes with both T-Mobile and AOL. This is my personal opinion, though, and I don't represent it as being that of my employer.
These two fit together well, if for no other reason than that they're both pretty bad about responding to security complaints. T-Online is notorious as a simultaneous source of scanning/exploit activity and a sink for abuse reports. AOL doesn't fare much better. Also, they'll probably end up keeping the brand name AOL since most of their customers could be easily confused by that sort of switch (most still don't know that Voicestream got bought by T-Mobile). So the sum effect of this would be that another company gets owned by Deutsche Telekom. Works for me: when I tell friends who really owns T-Mobile, more than one has decided they'd like to go with a domestic provider, even if it's not my employer.
My real question is, will Catherine Zeta Jones be in the new commercials? :)
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I for one welcome our new German overlords.
-Coach
"Never upset a goalie, getting hit with a blocker is an unpleasent experience - facemask or not." -Me
And I want a new Ferrari! It's good to have dreams.
JAV
Heh, if this transaction is completed - 43% of AOL will be owned by the german people (=the german government)! heh. :)
:)
c oms.dt/
Sooo, if internet usage goes up in the US => the taxes goes down i germany, excelent
Reference: http://edition.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/11/14/bbtele
You probably mean "Bild". The Spiegel is more like "Time".
Does this mean AOL will now block lancearmstrong.com? ;)
-- If you can't laugh at yourself, someone else will do it for you.
.. in English. See it here
Professor: Good news everyone. Several years ago I tried too log on AOL. And it just went through! Weeeeee..... We're online.
So now it will just take a month?
40% Funny, 40% Insightful, 40% Informative, 40% Dolomite
Wow, something I'd never thought I'd see on Slashdot -- shilling for the krauts!
Go get 'em, Werner! Raus! Raus! Mach Schnell!
Q: Why are French roads lined with trees?
A: So the German army can match in the shade!
BURNS: Ooooh! The Germans are mad at me! I'm so scared, the Germans! Oh the Germansare coming after me...
...Stop it, Mr. Burns!...
GERMANS:
Have you seen my stapler?
So it appears we have an official denial now (as reported by Forbes this morning).
T-Online has a big problem with spammer infestations and mucho compromised broadband-connected systems being (ab)used as spammer zombies. I've got large chunks of their IP space blocked locally because of these issues, mostly T-Dialin.net.
In contrast, though I may think AOL is nothing more than training wheels for the real Internet, I see maybe one or two spams a year from them, and the moron responsible quickly disappears once a report is made to AOL abuse.
Given these two obviously contrasting views, I think a buyout is going to be most interesting to watch. I wonder if Steve Case has taught himself German yet?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
>The airline that carries the most passengers - Lufthansa.
As I hold Lufthansa stock I would be happy if it was as you say - but I seriously doubt LH carries the most passengers. Last time I checked the worlds largest airline company was United Airlines. I am happily proven wrong on the point, however.
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
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)]...
We just signed up for a T-Mobile phone for our daughter -- would you believe they've taken all the pay phones out of the school gym? She's going to be going to Europe on a school trip, and T-Mobile's phones are the only ones compatible with the European standard. Why waste money on phone cards she probably won't use?
Packed with the phone were scads of flyers and brochures touting AOL IM service on her T-Mobile phone. Fortunately, she's smart enough to know how useless such a "service" would be, especially at 5c per text message.
There was such gratuitous use of AOL insignia, I was wondering what was going on. Now it makes more sense...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The actually story says T-Online is going to buy an AOL account. The 1 billion dollar price tag is a little steep, but that's what happens if you go over your 10,000 free hours in the first month.
from http://www.t-online.com/
"With over 11,849 million customers..."
Maybe they *do* have the cash to buy AOL...
(yes, I know that's 18.849 million US)
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
Hi, this is Steve. Why don't you just stop and leave me alone? Is there no end to your torment?
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
Actually, AOL is present in Germany already, and I believe in the German version of AOL, it says "Email fuer dich" (Email for you).
Well, your business savy is probably one reason why you don't have the money ;-)
AOL is good for getting your parents/grandparents online, and no one is forcing you to use it, so I don't see any reason to bash them.
Tell him or her that you don't want to see any further loss of American jobs in important sectors of the economy -- like producing endlessly wasteful sign-up CD-ROMs, policing the speech of adults as if they were children, and shoveling load after load of unwanted ads down the throat of miserable subscribers!
(P.S. Dear Germans: would you mind buying Microsoft, too?)
I didn't blame anybody for the failed merger, just pointing out that most of us would have been happier if it never happened to begin with. AOL's been dragging the company down because the stock price has been adjusting to what it should be instead of the artificially inflated price it was.
I even managed to say something nice about AOL - which must be a first on slashdot!
But more to the point - Time Warner content is not going to save AOL. People don't want a premium service when they can get what they want - internet service - from someone else for a lower price. I can't save AOL, neither can Time Warner - AOL is going to have to compete. That means lower prices. That's what people want. More technically oriented people also don't want to have to install a client in order to connect to the internet - most ISPs will let you connect with the software included in most OSes. AOL is bloatware. Of all the things people dislike about AOL, not having Time Warner content is NOT one of them, so I'm at a loss at what you think anybody else can do to help AOL.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Now they're in decline. Why would anyone want to acquire them, except as a distressed company? Their "content"? Yeah, right.
Coppermine == Coppertop? methinks so.
> when I tell friends who really owns T-Mobile, more than one has decided they'd like to go with a domestic provider, even if it's not my employer.
What's wrong with a German-owned wireless company? If there was any other provider in the US besides VZW who had acceptable coverage levels, I would consider going with T-Mobile just as much as with another carrier (except Satan's-spawn Cingular, which has earned "Most Unfavored Carrier" status in my opinion, for its abysmal network).
Besides, VZW is 44.3% owned by Vodafone, which is incorporated in the UK.
I guess my point is, how is doing business with a your average American company more desirable than with a your average German company? If either company can be proven "evil" somehow, then that taints the equation totally, but if neither is particularly bad, what's the problem? I mean, judging from the take on the current German economy from the posts in this thread, they need the business a lot more than our fat CEOs need another bonus check.
Ich bin ein Berliner!
It was rumored that Ish was also looking to pick up large to medium cable providers across europe at the time and become THE end all, be all broadband provider for europe. All for T-Online.
Ish then outsourced the building of their datacenter to High Speed Access, which was started by Paul Allen to funnel services to the giant Charter Communications. When he decided to bankrupt HSA in 2001 and sell the assets to Charter at pennies on the dollar, Ish was left without anyone to develop their portal, staff their NOC and man their datacenter. They hired on a few americans and basically it has failed.
Two years later, T-Online is looking to take another shot at the broadband market, and how better to do it than by picking up the devalued AOL in american dollars w/a 1.15:1 exchange rate? As others have said, AOL is probably undervalued and the NAME would go a long way in Germany. As much as they hate americans, they love american names and products.
Thus "America On-Line" would probably sell better than ISH, a local slang for Ich, or I in English. As T-Online (T-Online/DT same thing) only has a partial hold in Ish, they can let it die slowly. Ah well, Schumachers Kartbahn was the best part of that job anyways.
It'll still suck like a Hoover...
No, it'll just mean that after you sign up for AOL, you'll stop getting mail from the mailman.
Also on a really wet (slippery) day, your internet connection will be going along well and will suddenly crash badly.
Also Seal will really hate you.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
I use to do support for a major competing DSL provider and we'd get all kinds of stories that sales told customers. Trust me when I say that sales will promise whatever you want to get the sale. Why? They get commission whether they lied to you or not, and if it's easier to make a sale by lying then they'll lie to customers all day long.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone