Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to Buy Stake in AOL
NetDanzr writes "According to various sources (Bloomberg, Reuters, CNet), Microsoft is in talks with Time Warner to buy a stake in AOL. While the size of the stake or its prize has not been disclosed yet, Bloomberg speculates that this deal would profit both companies. Microsoft would profit from merging the AOL portal with MSN, as a strategy to catch up with his rivals in this space Yahoo and Google, while Time Warner would gain some ammunition in its fight with a renegade shareholder, Carl Icahn. According to CNBC, AOL is just about to turn the corner and is currently the most undervalued division of Time Warner."
Does this mark the end of netscape???
More probably, buying into AOL is a good way for Microsoft to ensure that AOL never abandons IE for Mozilla...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Sperry Univac merged with Burroughs at the end of the mainframe era and how that merger turned the mainframe business around ???
are you guys going to make some jokes about this?
this is no joke.
hotmail was good, and it was popular.
MS took it over and turned it into the most worst email (the low storage, the spam, the restrictions, etc) service ever. nevertheless, people keep using it because it's what they always used or what their friends use.
now take AOL, something already crappy. i can't possibly imagine what microsoft can do it. maybe this time around people will actually shy away to something else.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
I do not see how MS buying AOL stock is going to change ANYTHING at all in the Mozilla Foundation.
They are self-sufficient, independent and have been since at least the start of FireFox.
I think there are more programmers working in google then in AOL.
Microsoft sees its future in the media distribution/licencing business - hence so much R&D of their proprietary secured codecs for audio and video.
AOL is presently owned by Time Warner
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
There is a huge chunk of the online population in the U.S., perhaps most of it, for whom computers are a tool, like a hammer or a radio. They never bother to investigate what else you can do with a hammer besides tack up a picture, nor ever realize that there is more to a radio than "FM 104.3 - your home for today's Country and all time favorites".
For those folks, the Internet is either the little blue "e" or it's AOL. They don't have broadband, but they want it because the marketing geniuses at AOL have been telling them that AOL for broadband is better.
There is another set of users, mostly teenagers, who use either AIM or MSN Messenger to send messages back and forth to their friends' cell phones all day long. It's like passing notes in class, but they do it before breakfast, during breakfast, in the car, between or in classes, and so on. They do homework over it.
The teenagers don't know or care, for the most part, that there are dozens of IM clients and that they all pretty much work. They have MSN or AIM and that's all they need.
A portion of both groups discover eventually that the world is bigger than their little corner of it, but, like programmers using vi to edit CSS, they stick with their original chat and web clients even knowing that there are better alternatives.
I suspect that Microsoft and AOL has some synergy in that environment.
sigs, as if you care.