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AOL to be Split into 4 Units
unsupported writes "AOL is apparently dividing into four units to provide a clear direction for each. The four divisions are as follows: Audience (Advertising, and AOL IM, Moviefon, Mapquest, Netscape.com), Access (dial-up, highspeed), AOL Europe (for the foreigners), and Digital Services (Premium services, phone and music subscription). "
AOL still has a few more years left in them. Cable and DSL haven't quite become ubiquitous, and there are enough people in the "heartland" who aren't familiar enough with the Internet to know better.
Their new commercials purport to make the Internet better - that's the market AOL has to reach, people who think their software is the Internet.
It doesn't have much longer, though. Education will put AOL to a slow death unless they drastically reform their business to revolve around the things they do get right (like messaging) instead of "access" and "customer support" (both in scare quotes for obvious reasons).
AOL was marketed as an ISP for non technical people. This justified that added expense. Most families these days have at least one member who know at least a little bit about computing and sees that AOL is not needed. Its cheaper to get access from someone else and add the features you want. I suppose its because the internet has been around long enough for the general public (say 10 years of real viable public access?) so that either the adults have taken an interest or they have kids who know a great deal about it all. Seriously, AOL is just not worth the added expense. This new racket about including free anti-virus and spyware blocking is not going to change anything. Breaking into four main organisation is not the answer either. What they need to do is set their prices competitively and get some innovative content.
EOL stands for "end of life", but that's what we'd all want, right?
Anyway, "AOL" is a brand name, an opaque identifier. European subscribers seem to associate "AOL" with a specific online service provider rather than with the words "America Online", just as they associate "DSL" with "high-speed Internet access provided over the phone line" rather than with the words "digital subscriber line".
TimeWarner is not the problem. The problem is AOL is trying to compete in the exact same space as MSN and will always lose. MSN is able to better integrate into Windows. MSN will always be the first choice on the OS.etc, etc, etc.
AOL needs to learn to carry the fight to a different battleground; basically a neutral ground.
- Make Firefox/Mozilla the default (with MSIE an option)
- Provide OpenOffice on their system.
- Start using a media system that is on multiple systems. The ogg line is certainly a choice as are a number of others.
Then allow customers to run that for about a year. Finally, create a Linux distro for the home user that includes all the above. They can call it AOS. It will enable them to compete.What they need to do, but they will not do it. History simply repeats itself.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I used to work for a major Aircraft Flight Simulator company headquartered in Kirkwood NY. The company used to be refered to as the "Cadillac of Flight Simulators"
Toward the end, the company was re-organizing every few months. The employees commonly referred to these re-organizations as the equivalent of rotating 4 bald tires. This was a running joke during the final days of the company.
A year earlier, the company conducted company wide quality training sessions. During the training we were taught that frequent re-organizations were a sign of a failing company. Needless to say, the re-organizations were not successful in bringing the company back to life.
The company was sold and resold several times in the years that followed. The last I heard, is that telemarketers now occupy the building that used to be occupied by Engineers.