AOL Fight Narrows To Two Players

BucksCountyCycleGeek writes "Now that Yahoo! has dropped out of the race to control AOL, the field of contenders has narrowed to Microsoft and Google. While antitrust issues continue to cloud Microsoft's bid, it is getting pretty clear that AOL wants payment in cash and not Internet stock. While Google has worked with AOL in the past, Microsoft's resources dwarf them for the moment." From the CNN/Money article: "Time Warner accepted AOL's stock when the old line media company agreed in 2000 to be purchased by the Internet service provider, a deal that proved a disaster for Time Warner's stock value. Yahoo! executives also had concerns about the valuation Time Warner was seeking and possible difficulties integrating the two businesses after any deal, a person close to Yahoo! told the paper."

Comments

Yesterday's technology

[dada21]

AOL seems rooted in two old-fashioned categories:

1. "The Internet is the web," whoever makes the content wins (I call it the super BBS text file repository)

2. "The Internet is about connecting people together through my rose-colored lenses."

Both business markets are not ally valid anymore. Smaller ISPs seem to gain users by not making themselves visible as the middleman. The more you've noticed your ISP, the more I bet you've been frustrated.

Creating web content is better performed by billions of people than by dozens. CmdrTaco edits an article, but people come here for the +5'd comments. CmdrTaco couldn't get many +5's on his own (maybe -1 Redundants).

The future, to me, is how to collect all those billions of opinions and creations and make it specifically friendly to every individual user.

Google is heading in the correct direction. I let most of my domain names lapse because of Google. Yet they're still not there yet.

The ultimate web company has to be able to give you what you want, immediately, but also correctly give you items you need even if you didn't realize you needed them.

*Targeted ads you really want to see.
*Content that may be different than what you're used to, but still informative or useful to you.
*Access to information by only knowing some vague part of it. Find that TV show from a line or two. Find that song or book the same way.
*Compensate content creators somehow.

AOL is none of these things. They're an online newspaper and amusement park. *Yawn* I wouldn't pay $5 for them.

Plus, how many people "hate" the name over their junk mail and bad cancellation policy?

As for Time Warner stock, would you want a part of Time? Warner? Maybe in 1985.

I've seen this coming for years.

[Caspian]

My money's on MS + AOL. I've been saying they'll merge for years. Despite their hatred for each other, they're quite similar. (Maybe that's WHY they've been such fierce competitors?) They both appeal to technologically-illiterate end-users. They both employ nasty business tactics (AOL's usually lean more towards "annoying" on one hand and "shady" on the other; MS's can better be described as "illegal" and "brutal"; all different shades of evil but all evil!). Neither wants to educate their customers. Both want to build 'walled gardens' around the Internet to some degree. And so on.